Hard to Stay, Harder to Leave
by Bastetian
Summary: Shane Schofield doesn't want a family. Shane Schofield doesn't need a family and he definitely doesn't want a brother. Alternatively titled, the obligatory High School AU fic.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Okay, I know I promised that I'd get to work on finishing LW but to be honest, it's just not cooperating and neither is Interludes at the moment. This idea's been sitting around in my head for a while now and I've decided to just get it out and onto paper (of the electronic kind) in the hope that then there might be some more room in my mind for LW and Interludes. My major apologies to the people who are waiting for an update for either one of those and doubly so to the people that are kind enough to review/favourite/follow.

I've also come to the conclusion that I have now written one of every type of story that I generally avoid. OC romances, cross-overs and complete AU's. I am clearly a hypocrite.

Since this story is completely AU, there will be characters in here that could not canonically appear together in the books, usually because they're dead. Hopefully I've managed to keep them all in character in this totally different setting.

And since I really cannot write anything else, the main pairing in this story will be slash in spite of the fact that the other half of the canonical pairing is still alive. Actually, this story gave me an opportunity to think about who I really do ship across all the books, reality/death be damned, which has resulted in the background (and het!) pairing. The major pairing that appears in this story is my OTP and hopefully I'll be able to sell it to you guys since at the moment, I gather I'm the only person that ships these two together and maybe even the only person that even likes the other half of the pairing. As Darren Criss so eloquently said with regards to Draco and Hermione, "there's no way two people could be that mean to each other without having to suppress some kind of feelings and we we're hoping it would come to fruition but it never did." I truly hope every Harry Potter fan knows what that quote is referring to.

Also, I just wanted to say quickly and hopefully not to desperate sounding, at least part of the reason I've been struggling so much to write is that I've been putting a lot of effort into attempting to bring back some real life to this fandom. We're only small but I know smaller fandoms that still have meta discussions about plot holes and favourite characters and future books. Hell, at this point I'd even settle for a good shipping war. Anyway, it's just not happening and it's pretty disenchanting. I'd be more than happy to run a prompt meme and organise challenges and exchanges, all I ask is for some response. So if you're on livejournal, (If you're not on it, you should join up, it's fun. I'm always open to friends and will friend back and will be more than happy to introduce you to how the site works and some good groups to join. If you don't know what livejournal is, it's like facebook for fandom and it's pretty awesome once you get used to it.) do me a favour, join the MR community there and let's have some fun together as a fandom! There, shameless pleading/spamming over.

And just to make sure it's absolutely clear, when a Buck is mentioned, unless it's specified as Senior, it's always referring to Junior.

Chapter 1

When the bell went for the end of sixth period, Shane Schofield was the first person out the door. With no one to stop to chat to and having managed to avoid giving the teacher a reason to hold him back for this lesson at least, he was able to make it to his locker and grab his bags at record speed.  
But even that wasn't fast enough.

Across the hall, the Riley boy, on his way to his own locker and with his gaggle of friends hanging around him, raised his hand in a casual wave.

Schofield didn't know how the other kid managed to pull it off. No matter their conflicting timetables; in spite of their lockers being at opposite ends of the schools and between Riley's half a dozen extra-curriculars, he still managed to find a time every day to acknowledge Schofield's presence in his school.

It was never obvious or intruding, just a wave across a crowded corridor, but Schofield didn't understand why the kid bothered and it was starting to do his head in.

He scowled back at the younger boy but jerked his head in acknowledgement anyway.

Schofield made his break for the doors and freedom but not before he heard one of the girls ask Riley, "Who is he, anyway?"

He didn't hang around long enough to hear Riley's answer.

Schofield walked the long way back to the Riley's place on purpose. The suburb was great. It wasn't the swankiest place Schofield had stayed by far – plenty of rich families liked to take in kids like him to feel like they were doing something good, so he'd stayed in some posh digs – but the streets were clean and lined with trees. The houses were worn in a friendly, lived in way and there was always some little kid on a bicycle or playing in a park. It was the sort of place Schofield imagined felt like home.

By the time he arrived at the brown brick house with its wide front porch and leafy garden, Schofield was pushing for time. He wasn't late exactly late yet – the light was on in the kitchen window but not the dining room, so Paula Riley must still have been cooking dinner. He wasn't technically late until dinner had started. That was one of the Rileys' rules: we eat together – but he wasn't quite back when he was meant to be either.

When he let himself in through the creaking front door – they had given him his own key. It was a big thing, okay – he found he was right. Paula called a hello to him from the kitchen, where the tantalising smells of a home-made meal were wafting from, and the obligatory 'how was your day?'

He made a non-committal sort of grunt that didn't answer the question at all but managed a half smile for her on his way past the wide open kitchen door.

She didn't ask him why he was late.  
That was one of the great things about the Rileys - they didn't push for the details he didn't want to give; not if they didn't matter. And seeing as the worst that could be said of him was that his sneakers were scuffed, it didn't matter.

He was home in time for dinner.  
In the six or so months that the Rileys had been fostering him, he hadn't yet missed dinner.  
That was what mattered.

As he ran upstairs, he could tell Buck Riley Junior was already home because he could hear the shower running. Shutting the door – to _his_ bedroom, The Rileys were new to fostering but they would learn – Shane allowed himself a whole minute of just collapsing on the bed before reluctantly fishing the monster pile of maths homework from his bad and dragging himself to the desk.

He'd only been working for ten minutes, though it felt like hours, when the door snuck open again and a balled up towel hit him in the head.

"Nice shot," he said scathingly to Buck Riley Junior, whose smiling face had appeared in the doorway, drying his neatly cut short brown hair with another towel.

"Well don't leave your dirty things lying around in the bathroom," Buck shot back. "Other people have to use it too."

For some reason Schofield wasn't even going to try to fathom, the younger boy brought his laptop into his bedroom, sat down on the floor with his back up against the bed and opened it, beginning some game that made a lot of noise like he was shooting something.

"What are you doing?" Schofield asked, tearing his eyes away from his work to look down at Riley.

"Playing a computer game," the younger boy answered as though it should have been obvious.

Actually, it was obvious but that hadn't been what Shane was asking. He was asking why the boy was playing a computer game in his room and in his presence. The kid had friends he could go bother, didn't he?

"Don't you have your own homework to do?" He asked.

Buck shook his head.  
"I already did it," he replied.

Then it was Schofield's turn to shake his head.  
"Of course you did."

"Want to play?" Buck asked. "The graphics on the way the aliens' heads blow up is really cool."

Schofield looked at his like he was an idiot.  
"No."

Buck just shrugged and went back to his game. The kid was indomitable; Schofield had to give him that. Shane didn't really feel justified in kicking him out of the room. After all, he actually lived here whilst Schofield was just a stray in from the cold. He went back to his homework.

Schofield didn't actually mind maths all that much. The numbers were always right or wrong, clear cut, predictable, reliable. He hadn't had a lot of reliable in his life.  
It was the English homework he was really not looking forward too.

They stayed that way for nearly an hour – Schofield steadily working through the problems and Buck steadily working through the aliens – until they both heard the front door open and shut again, signalling that Buck Riley Senior had arrived home. Downstairs, they could hear Paula and Buck Senior in the hallway and Paula took the opportunity to call both boys down for dinner.

Together, they set the table whilst Paula put the finishing touches on dinner. She had made meatloaf again. They probably ate meatloaf at least once a week but Shane didn't mind. It was his favourite actually but he wasn't going to kid himself into thinking that's why Paula made it so often.

The meatloaf at the home he'd been in had been dreadful, cobbled together from whatever scrap meats they had lying around so as not to waste a mouthful. The money for state homes didn't stretch far enough for that. Every foster family he'd ever stayed with had always made meatloaf as well, with varying degrees of tasty and so it seemed to him something special. Something for families.

Paula Riley's meatloaf was good by his standards and he'd tried a lot of meatloaf in his time. She always cooked it just right until it was juicy and tender and there was a mystery spice she added to it that Shane had never had before. It just worked. Simple and hearty.  
Paula Riley wasn't the best cook normally but damn, the woman made a fierce meatloaf.

Over dinner, Buck Riley Senior loosened the tie on his khaki service uniform and regaled them with tales of the latest recruit dramas. He was a drill instructor down at the famous Parris Island Recruit Depot. Schofield had heard that he had once been a marine recon but an unfortunate injury had pulled him out of active service. Nowadays, he trained the new recons.

Schofield could easily imagine that Riley Senior was good at his job. He had a patience and a calming presence that the recruits probably needed. Some of the other instructors had a glare that would send even the toughest of marines running for the hills but when Buck Riley Senior looked at you with disappointment in his eyes, it was enough to make anyone want to do better.

"Did you boys have plans for this evening?" Paula asked, her kind eyes surveying Schofield over the glass she had wrapped in her hands.

"Homework," Schofield mumbled through a mouthful of mashed potatoes after Buck had announced that he had invited a few friends over.

Paula continued to look at Shane and he had the peculiar sense that she could see right through him.

"You know you're welcome to have friends over too, Shane," She said gently.

Schofield nodded.  
They both knew he didn't have any friends to invite but it was a nice sentiment.

"You could join us?" Buck Junior piped up.

"What, and hang out with a bunch of loser sophomores," Schofield said with just enough laughter in his voice so that the younger teen knew he was joking. "Thanks but no thanks."

It wasn't technically true either. Shane knew that the pretty blonde girl in Buck's year was dating that big football player; and wasn't that just the picture of ideal teenage life. Anyway, the footballer, who's name Schofield had never bothered to catch, would be coming over too if the blonde girl came and he was a senior.

When he'd first moved in with the Rileys, there had been some debate about which year in school to enrol Schofield in. He was sort of young for a junior and his last few years of school had been pretty broken to say the least. It probably wouldn't have done him any harm to have gone back and done sophomore year again but he wasn't having it.

If things had gone the other way, or if Schofield wasn't so stubborn, he may very well have been a sophomore, tagging on the end of Buck's little group.

It was a pretty pathetic excuse really.

Instead, he offered to do the dishes, gathering them up and speeding from the dining room before the doorbell rang for the first time but not before he saw Paula and Buck Riley Senior exchange a look. Whatever they said quietly to each other, he couldn't hear over the clatter of the dishes.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Wow, I really should stop posting things at 2 o'clock in the morning. Have now gone back and fixed all the typos and stupid things in that last chapter. Please feel free to let me know if I've missed any! Sorry!

I've got to say just quickly – I absolutely love Libby Gant as a character and I really hope this story does her justice. That said, I still don't ship her with Schofield. Sorry. Slasher, through and through.

For the people that watch glee, I almost imagine Libby and Juliet as Quinn (from the part where she becomes friends with Mercedes onwards, nice Quinn, not bitchy Quinn) and Santana. Minus the teenage pregnancy and lesbian dramas… Just sort of the picture I've got in my head there.

Where possible, I've kept the characters call signs or other identifying features.

If you don't know what cauliflowered ears look like, google it, they're fascinatingly gross. They tend to happen as a result of contact sports. Forwards in Rugby Union often have spectacular ones as a result of scrummaging without headgear.

Chapter 2

It was a truth universally acknowledged that Shane Schofield hated school about as much as the school hated Shane Schofield.

Some of the classes were fine – like maths, where he could just keep his head down and do his work, or science where occasionally they let him blow stuff up – but whoever's idea it had been to try and force a bunch of teenage boys into reading anything by Austin was a fucking idiot.

He could even ignore the doddery ancient teachers who had been there longer than he had been alive and the ones that tried to act cool, not realising that it had the opposite effect. The ones that looked at him with disappointment when he didn't contribute or bother to hand in an assignment though, they were the real problem.  
It was so much easier when nobody had any expectations of him.

He was trying to pass the rest of lunch in the safety of the library, mostly because nobody would ever think to look for him in there, when the door to one of the seminar rooms slid open behind him and a voice said curiously, "Shane?"

Internally, Schofield cursed.

Because of fucking course, Buck Riley Junior and his gang of friends would hang out in the library during lunch.

"What are you doing here?" Buck asked again.

"It's not illegal, is it," Schofield shot back, keeping his back firmly to Buck and reaching aimlessly for the nearest book, hoping to look like he was already engrossed in it.

Unfortunately for him, Buck just took that as an opportunity to walk out of the room and over to him.

Shane thought briefly about covering his face with the book but that wouldn't be dignified and besides, Riley was going to see it at some point.

"Fuck, man," Buck breathed out and Schofield almost snorted, he'd never heard the younger boy swear before. "What happened to your face?"

"You're not exactly roses yourself, are you?" Schofield quipped back, trying to play it off as no big deal. He jerked his head at Riley's squashed boxers nose and heavy-set eyebrows, both of which he'd inherited from his father but Buck didn't rise to the bait.

Buck shrugged.  
"At least I don't look like someone used my face for target practice."

Schofield tried to scowl but twisting his facial muscles like that hurt, so he settled for half a wince and spitting back, "At least I'll be pretty again in the morning."

In the many state and foster homes he'd been in, Schofield's smart mouth had earned him his share of beatings. Some of the older boy who had been slipping through the cracks for too long used to hit him every time he opened his mouth, just in case he was insulting them without their realising. And he'd been put with more than one foster parent that thought they could beat the cheek out of him.  
It had never worked.  
He'd just put more effort into being clever about it.

But Buck just laughed and grabbed Schofield's arm, dragging him into the seminar room against his will, saying "Come on, we can't leave you out here looking like you've gone half a dozen rounds with Wolverine. Mrs Price'll give you detention for sure."

Inside the room, Shane stopped short.

Buck looked at him nervously.  
"Do you know everyone?" he asked.

Schofield knew _of _every one of them but he'd never spoken a word to any of them.

One of the girls was the fastest to recover from his sudden arrival and probably disquieting appearance. She managed a wave and even a smile.

Shane would have had to have been living under a rock to have not known who she was. Hell, everyone knew who Libby Gant was.

Athletic and beautiful, she still managed to stay top of every class and was the chairwoman of the student council. With her lithe body, choppy blonde hair falling just above her shoulders and eyes clearer than the sky on a cloudless day, she was most people's idea of perfection. All the girls wanted to be her and all the boys wanted to date her.

Really, it was enough to make anyone hate her on principal, except that she was so goddamn nice that everyone loved her and she loved everyone. Somehow, around her busy schedule, she still found the time to mentor the new freshmen or comfort the classmate whose grandma had just died. There wasn't a single person in the school she considered beneath her.

So really, Schofield shouldn't have been so surprised that she knew him.

"It's Shane, right?" Libby said, showing perfect white teeth through a genuine smile.

Schofield just nodded.

The girl beside Libby surveyed him with icy eyes. She looked like she could kill him with her little finger and not break a sweat. Juliet Janson was head cheerleader and head bitch in charge. Her only real competition in the classroom and on the field was Libby Gant and yet somehow, the two were best friends. Though not as conventionally pretty as Libby, with her flawless Eurasian complexion and elegant almond eyes, Juliet still had more than her fair share of unwanted admirers.  
And she had no qualms about cutting them down either with her scathing mouth or her black belt.

She quirked a single eyebrow at Schofield.

This girl, he reckoned, this girl was more than a match for him.

Both girls were sitting cross-legged on the floor and behind them sat the large footballer and a couple of his cronies that Schofield only knew by sight. The three of them were half-sitting half-leaning up against a large and hopefully sturdy desk but it steal creaked ominously every time one of them moved.

"Paul Wilson," the first one introduced himself, holding out a hand for Schofield to shake. He was pleasantly surprised to find that whilst his grip was firm, it clearly wasn't the precursor to a pissing contest.  
Shane liked that.

"Usually called Bigfoot," Buck added and Schofield could see why. Even perched on the desk, he was still taller than Schofield, who had admittedly always been a little on the more compact side, himself. Had Bigfoot stood up, Shane was sure he would have towered over him. And yet his hand not offered to Schofield was messing with Libby's hair, almost subconsciously carding through the short layers at the back of her head.  
A gentle giant then.

"Wendell and Ashley," Buck introduced the cronies as.

They both scowled.

"Try calling us that," Wendell, a loud-talking and generally large African-American guy, said. "We dare you."

"It's Elvis and Love Machine," the one called Ashley finished off. Shorter and stouter than the other, to put it politely, he was built like a brick shithouse.

"Love Machine?" Schofield retorted.

Ashley waved a hand in the general direction of his face.  
"It's 'cause I got such a pretty mug."

Schofield snorted a laugh. It was true; Love Machine was astonishingly ugly with a broad, flat nose and cauliflowered ears from one to many football collisions.

In the other corner of the room were huddled a pair of comic book geeks and with matching blonde hair, blue eyes and too pale skin from extended computer usage, it may have been impossible to tell them apart at a distance but close up, Schofield could see that one of them had 'boy-next-door' good looks whilst the other had a thin, scrawny neck and a nose too large for his thin face.

"This is Sean Miller and Gus Gorman," Buck said, waving a hand in their general direction. "Nerds extraordinaire."

The one called Gus – with the big nose - let out what sounded like an offended squawk and piped up, "If Elvis and Love Machine get cool nicknames, we want them too. We're going to be Astro and Brainiac."

"Whatever," came the sly reply from the last person in the room, who had escaped Schofield's attention at first. The speaker was another boy, leaning languidly on a desk away from the others, with his arms folded across his chest. He had olive skin and hair as black as Schofield's own that fell all the way into his eyes. He gave off an air of deliberate aloofness and effortless cool.

The boy's dark eyes flicked up, locking onto Schofield's blue ones nonchalantly.

"The nickname's only cool if you are to begin with," he said to Gus and Sean, without letting go of Schofield's gaze. The 'and you're not,' was left unsaid but clearly implied.

It was a challenge and be damned if Shane was going to give in first.

Luckily, Buck interrupted, drawing both their eyes.

"This is Paulo Sanchez," he said, "but it gets confusing having two Paul's around so he's usually just known as - "

"Sanchez," the other boy cut across smoothly, smirking.

Schofield lifted his chin in acknowledgement – two could play at the hard boy act and Shane had plenty of years practice – and took the abandoned table in the corner directly opposite him wordlessly.

Schofield was having trouble piecing together this strange group of friends. Libby Gant could have sat down at any table in the cafeteria and been welcome but Shane could understand why she would choose to hang around with Buck. Much like his father and namesake, Buck Riley Junior had a calm and steady presence; he was quick to think, though slow to speak. Like Libby, he was pretty well liked amongst most of the students but smart enough to keep his nose out of the dramas of being really popular. Shane suspected that Buck and Libby, as secretary and president respectively, had probably met at some unbearably boring school council meeting that nobody other than them could ever be bothered to attend.

Juliet was easy – she went where Libby went. In a small school, two girls like that, each other's worst competition, could only ever be best friends or mortal enemies.  
And Libby Gant couldn't cultivate mortal enemies.

Bigfoot, Elvis and Love Machine, as seniors and the stars of the football team could have been the kings of the school. The reason why they hung around with a bunch of sophomores was obvious, Bigfoot was dating Libby and Elvis and Love Machine following Bigfoot.

They should have been a cliché – the footballer and the pretty blonde – but Bigfoot's gentleness despite his imposing physique and Libby's niceness that just shouldn't be allowed in a girl with that much else going for her, made them something else entirely together.

And yet this group of people that could have been popular, could have been cool, could have been the sort of group that every high school kid dreams of belonging too, somehow not only tolerated but clearly welcomed the presence of the geeky Sean and Gus.

Schofield didn't pretend to understand the intricacies of high school cliques. Usually he tried to avoid forming friendships so that it made leaving every time just that little bit easier.  
But he was pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to go.

And then there was Sanchez, the outlier.

With Schofield hanging around the fringes, the group slotted back into the conversation he had obviously interrupted.

"I'm going anywhere that'll offer me a scholarship and get me out of Beaufort and South Carolina," Libby said.

To which Juliet replied, "Not me. I'm not settling for anything less than the big city itself, NYU."

Schofield guessed they were talking about college and he couldn't help but heartily agree with Elvis when he said, "Aren't you two a bit young to be thinking about college yet? Hell, I'm nearly finished and I ain't got a clue where I'm headed."

"Come with me," Love Machine said with a wide grin. "I'm enlisting."

"Why would you do that?" Sean asked, tearing himself away from the side discussion he was having with Gus about the marvel multiverse. (Is Earth-913, without future incarnations of the x-men really better than Earth-811, a dystopian alternate reality where mutants are held in concentration camps; and would we rather live in either of those worlds with the supernatural present and possible instead of Earth-1218, the real world. Then again, how do we know we don't live in Earth-1218 and that the writers have convinced us these alternate realities don't exist by making them the realm of science fiction and comic books… and so on. Apparently this particular conversation was ongoing and unlikely to be resolved soon.)

Love Machine shrugged, "I got an ugly head and not much in it, serving my country seems my best option."

"It's not a bad option," Buck said in his soft voice. "I'll be joining you and my dad there, I reckon."

When Bigfoot spoke, his voice was slow and measured.  
"College'll let me play football, that's good enough for me."

It was Juliet who first turned a sharp eye on Schofield, lurking in the corner, listening to the conversation with growing dread.

"And what are you going to do?" She asked pointedly, the one question Schofield didn't want to hear.

Aiming to look like he could care less when really he didn't have a clue, he shrugged it off as all eyes turned to him.  
"Dunno," he said, "I'm just hoping to pass Spanish first."

Juliet lifted an eyebrow at him disdainfully, as though he was confirming every stereotype she had imagined about him and fuck that, he didn't need to put up with that sort of shit. There were always assumptions every time he started a new school – he wasn't just the new kid, he was the new kid with no family, the one who needed to be fostered. There was always some kid asking him if he could set them up with crack or a fake I.D. assuming he had connections and shit like that. His locker had been searched more times than he cared to recall and most of the schools had some dorky older student waiting to mentor him "on the right path."

He went to class, kept his head down and tried to cause no more trouble than any other kid but still there were assumptions and nobody wanted to be friends with 'that Schofield boy.'  
Which was fine, he didn't want friends because they never stayed friends after he'd left anyway.

And then it was a whole new school with a whole new set of assumptions and a whole bunch of new kids to not be friends with.

Of course the scars probably didn't help. His arms were littered with small circular cigarette burns as well as the scars from growing up in the state homes without antiseptic or a mom to wash away scrapes and bruises. But it was the one on his face – a long thin weal that was still red and angry after all these years – that cut down obliquely across his right eye that most people noticed first; a leftover from a belt buckle gone astray.

Today, it was mostly covered by a swollen, discoloured bruise that was sure to be a good black eye tomorrow.

The one day his – perhaps unwarranted – reputation might have come in handy was naturally, the one day it didn't work. He'd been angry already, pretty sure he'd bombed a Spanish test, when he'd walked into the cafeteria to find one of the Jocks mashing a freshman's face into his mystery lunch meat. He'd yelled, hoping it would be enough, that no one would willingly pick a fight with the foster kid with a bad past.

But the jock in question was apparently that stupid.

He'd dropped the kid and started in on Schofield instead.  
Which was stupid because Shane had picked up some moves in his time.

There's a reason bullies pick on people smaller than them – that way no one ever hits back. All Schofield had to do was land one fist into the other guy's belly and he was doubled over, backing away. Unfortunately, the jock had friends and that was perhaps one of the benefits of them that Schofield had overlooked.

He had landed a few more decent blows but it wasn't long before they had him in a blue and black heap on the floor.

Schofield had limped off to the library but at least they left the freshman alone.

Juliet's tone of voice more than the question itself had him on his feet in a second and she flinched momentarily. Maybe she thought he would hit her too but whatever she thought, he'd been defending a little kid, he didn't go around picking fights and he'd never hit a woman.

He glared at her for a full minute whilst the tension in the room ratcheted up. He turned sharply to leave but before he could reach the door, Bigfoot's voice broke the tense silence.

"If you're having trouble with Spanish, Pancho could help you," he said softly.

Schofield was momentarily confused, trying to work out who Pancho was until he realised all the eyes in the room had turned from him to Sanchez. Except for Sanchez, who was staring straight back at him, as though weighing him up.

"Next time you don't know something in class," he said in a soft voice that was very different to Bigfoot's. Bigfoots was soft and gentle, pacifying; whereas Sanchez's was soft and silky, sly, "Say 'Soy embarazada.' It's like, slang for I don't know and I'm sorry. Better than saying nothing at all."

Schofield nodded his thanks and then he was out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **This chapter is dedicated to the wonderful GoddessofOlympia and EBS who have both been with me since the very beginning. Thanks for opening your minds to all my crazy ideas and supporting me along the way. I hope the crazy still works.

Can I also take the time to rec the story 'The Marine Who Can Read Thoth,' by Goddess. If you've come looking for MR fanfiction with a real MR style plot, a kickass OC and a great meeting of the worlds of Scarecrow and Jack West Junior, look no further than that story. On the other hand, you're not going to find any of that in mine – sorry.

I'm going to try and slip as many characters from the books in as possibly, but mostly just in passing references.

I can also read and write fluently in Spanish – can't speak it all that well, though – and if you've ever learnt Spanish, you've probably heard somebody make the mistake that Schofield makes in this chapter. People always think it means "I'm embarrassed," and it's always funny. Especially when it's a boy who says it. I may also be poking fun at one of my own stories here.

Chapter 3

Schofield had waited until the end of fourth period to ambush the other boy in the corridor although in fairness, he hadn't really planned it. Yesterday was not an isolated incident, it turned out and now it looked like he was headed for a run of bad days. He'd arrived at school to find rotten tomatoes had been forced through the slots of his locker, squishing them until they soaked into all his books. His history homework was a write off and the teacher less than impressed. Mr Pennebaker, the balding science teacher, had chewed him out for a small accident with a Bunsen burner and it felt like his entire English class was out to make him feel stupid. The incident in Spanish class really was his breaking point and when he saw Sanchez in the corridor, lips curling in a self-satisfied smirk, he just boiled over.

He shoved through the crowd until he was right up in Sanchez's personal space. He could have slammed the other boy against the lockers but he didn't, just stayed close enough to be past the line of over-friendly and into threatening. He did however, brace one arm up against the locker, pinning Sanchez in place.

"What the fuck did I do to you?" Schofield spat but quietly. He didn't need to yell, it would only cause a scene. He knew better than most that quiet could be just as deadly. Most of his worst blows had been received at the end of a quietly menacing statement.

He was close enough to see that Sanchez was struggling to supress a laugh and it wasn't until he had managed to school his features back to their normal haughtiness that he dared to speak.  
"What did she say?"

Actually, Mrs Cameron, the vivacious Spanish teacher, hadn't been angry at all. So Shane knew that whatever it was that Sanchez had tricked him into saying couldn't have been anything unforgivably rude. Seeing as she had laughed, but not in an unkind way, he assumed that it was more along the lines of monumentally embarrassing.

Mrs Cameron, with her long auburn hair and killer curves was a popular teacher especially amongst the male student population but Schofield like her because even though he was steadily flunking his way through her class, she refused to give up on him. As Caucasian as you could get, she had once told him that she herself had barely passed her first year of learning the language. As a non-native speaker, it was always a struggle to start from point zero and that many people felt like a stupid child stumbling through for the first time. She had also told him that sheer stubbornness had brought her success and that he had stubbornness in plenty.  
Yeah, he liked her.

So he was pretty damn pissed that Sanchez had made him look the fool in front of her.  
Or worse, like he thought the class was a joke and wasn't even trying.

"She said my biology teacher had a lot to answer for," Schofield replied, inching closer to Sanchez and making sure to tilt his head in a way that put his scar practically in Sanchez's face. People instinctively flinched away from it, found it uncomfortable, intimidating. "So I'm going to ask one last time, what the fuck did you make me say?"

Sanchez shrugged.  
"You might've said you were pregnant."

Schofield snarled and quick as a flash, Sanchez had ducked beneath his arm and spun away down the corridor, whistling.

"Mazel tov," he called back as he disappeared into the throng of students.

Schofield saw red until his head cleared a little and he realised that no, he was actually seeing yellow. The bright yellow of the school bus idling out the front, that was. Internally, he cursed. The bus was there to take the students to their sport afternoon. Today was Tuesday, which made it the juniors turn. Now normally, sport was the majority of teenage males idea of a great idea – two hours of class time dedicated to running around like idiots, yeah it was a good idea; but it was also summer and summer meant swimming.

And nobody had ever bothered to teach Shane to swim.

After the day he was having, it was a miracle he hadn't yet got detention and today of all days, he couldn't afford detention. So really, it was a matter of self-preservation that made him slip out the back door and jump the fence. He'd get in heaps of trouble for having not brought his swimming costume along and besides, he'd already made a fool of himself once today. Doing it again whilst surrounded by potentially lethally deep water wasn't his idea of fun.

It did strike him that he was going to get in even more trouble for this in the long term but that was okay, as long as he didn't miss this afternoon.

Schofield jumped on the first bus he saw that was headed for Charleston, the nearest major city. Slumping in his seat, he pulled out his phone and sent a text message off into the blue.

Charleston was over an hour away and even when he did arrive, there was still another twenty minute walk to get to where he needed to be but even then, having skipped out on school, he would still be early.

Instead, he detoured through to the site of St John the Baptist Cathedral in the heart of Charleston, where a familiar figure was waiting for him.

The woman towered over him, easily 6ft 4 and a bit, and was as well built as any of the footballers Schofield had come across. With her imposing physique and a fully shaved head, she cut a mean figure. And yet, despite her utter lack of any quality that could be considered maternal, she was known only as –

"Mother," Shane said by way of greeting.

Schofield knew her real name was Gena because that's what the matrons in the state homes had called her but everyone else just called her Mother.

Schofield also knew how she had got the name.  
Some punk kid had spat at her feet one day and called her a Motherfucker.  
She had spat in his face and broken his nose.  
The name stuck.

Which was fine with her, she liked it, but all of them including Mother herself made sure to use the shortened, polite version in front of the smaller kids in the homes. Each one of them felt a sense of responsibility for the little ones. They cleaned up their bruises and made them brush their teeth and watch their language so that one day, somebody might come into the state care home and take them away to a real one. Nobody ever wanted the older kids and they knew that but they could still make sure that someone might want one of the younger ones.

And then by the time the young ones had become the older ones, they had realised what the older kids had done for them – even if it hadn't worked – and they made sure the cycle continued.

Those who didn't have anyone else looked out for each other.

So when Mother had turned 18 and free of the system, she had taken flight and taken Schofield with her. At the time, he'd been barely 14. Three months later, they had hitchhiked and camped and walked as far as the Georgia border, heading for Florida, before Child Protective Services had caught up with them. After that, it had been decided that Schofield needed a firmer hand and a more secure life.  
He'd been in and out of foster homes ever since.

Mother, technically an adult, could have gone anywhere she liked.  
She had stayed in South Carolina, flipping burgers in Charleston.

"This place is creepy as fuck," Mother said in her rough drawl, "Why'd you want to meet here?"

To her credit, she didn't mention the large and impressive bruise that covered half of Schofield's face. The centre of it stretched across his cheekbone was a deep dark purple and the edges were flecked with a sickly green.

Schofield shrugged and sunk to the ground, legs curled cross legged underneath him.

They were in the cemetery attached to the Cathedral. Mother, deeply irreverent as always, was sitting atop a large marble tombstone. He was happier on the ground even though Mother had pointed out that actually brought him closer to the dead. But Shane wasn't scared of the dead. Not even his mother's mangled body hadn't scared him because even as a small child, he had known that she was better off dead and buried than living the life she had.

Memories on the other hand, they could be terrifying; and what was a tombstone but a physical way of making sure someone was remembered?

The original church that had stood on these grounds – The Cathedral of Saint John and Saint Finbar – had been a beautiful gothic building. When it burnt down in the 1800's, they had replaced it with an ugly modern monstrosity that could only (badly) copy the intricacies of gothic architecture. Schofield had an unusual fascination with anything gothic. Perhaps it was the blend of opulence with the macabre that drew him, a boy who knew nothing of the former and too much of the latter.

Remnants of the beauty of the old church however, had been left behind in the oldest parts of the graveyard and here it was that Schofield had asked Mother to meet him. She took out a pair of six-packs and handed one to Schofield even when he shook his head.

"Ralph says you need it," Mother said.

Ralph was Mother's trucker boyfriend. With his hard-ass grin and heart of gold, Mother knew she was onto a winner here. If her burger pittance and Ralph's truck salary had been able to take care of a third person, they would have taken Schofield in a heartbeat but this new family he'd been landed with, they seemed okay in her books.

Schofield however, was already ignoring her. In his hands was a large pad of thick paper and a soft pencil which moved quickly as he caught the details of the monstrous little gargoyles that lurked on the tombstones. They came to life in shades of grey under Schofield's hands. Their eyes twinkled and their teeth glistened on the flat paper.

It was a hobby Schofield took great lengths to conceal from his schoolmates. It would spoil his reputation in an instant. But even when there weren't enough toys to go around at the homes, there was always a piece of scrap paper lying around and a pencil he could borrow from the school supplies. Drawing had been his only way out as a child, when all the world could fall away into a single spot of beauty that he had to capture. He could no less draw than breathe.

Years of practice had enhanced what natural talent he had, his hand was sure and fast, casting powerful strokes across the paper that could still come out at the impossibly fine line of a feathered wing or the gentle shadows that hung around corners.

Of course, despite his best efforts, he hadn't been able to hide his talents from the families he had lived with and the Riley's were no exception to that. Only, Buck Riley Senior didn't swot him and Paula Riley didn't call him a nancy boy. Instead, he had come home one day to find a proper artist's sketch pad – the one he was using now – and a new set of lead pencils.

It was a bribe, he found out afterwards. Since the small local high school he attended didn't offer Advanced Placement classes, they had enrolled him in an external AP Studio Art Drawing class at some private school in Charleston.  
Bribery, Shane decided, was totally fine by him.

Together, they sat in that graveyard for two hours in near complete silence, Schofield immersed in his pictures and Mother steadily working her way through her six-pack. Neither of them minded the silence. Schofield tended to be guarded and quiet by nature whilst Mother was loud and in your face all the time. The thing was, it was for the same purpose. Both of them were just trying to keep people away so they couldn't get close enough to hurt them.

Mother was his best friend. Perhaps his only friend. Shane knew that every time someone was bold (or stupid) enough to ask Mother how she had ended up in the system, she would give them a different, wildly entertaining answer.  
And every one of them was false.

Every word that came out of Mother's mouth was a funny, noisy, carefully constructed shield.  
Shane on the other hand, just couldn't be bothered to expend that much energy, so he kept quiet.

They sat in silence because it meant that Mother could let down that shield, just a little, just for a little while.

The first chill of evening was beginning to fill the air and the waning light cast the graveyard into forbidding half-shadows. At night, even Schofield found the place frightening. So he packed up his stuff, said he'd see Mother later and began the walk to the school on the other side of town.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **On the art that's being included in this story, it's all borrowed from pieces I've done myself. The stuff on the gargoyles and gothic architecture is all stuff I researched and messed around with during my final year of school. The only piece of it however, that made it into my final exhibition is the piece that you can see as the cover picture. That little monster eating away at the heart was representative to me of my experiences with depression. When I was particularly bad, my best friend used to say it was "my little blue monster." So when it came down to trying to tell me own story through my art, there he was, my little blue monster. I actually think he's kinda cute. Most people just think he's creepy…

And all of Skip's exploits at school, they're also based on my own experiences. I was an absolute terror at school. If you want to know what I did that managed to frighten off a student teacher so much that the poor guy never came back, well, you'll have to ask.

Chapter 4

Schofield slunk into the art room – bigger than his own school's assembly hall – and took his customary easel tucked away in the back corner. The easels were all arranged in a big circle around the room so that if they were working on portraiture or a still life, everyone could see the subject. For Shane, the class was a nerve wracking experience. He got to express things in art that he couldn't find the words for aloud. Being surrounded by strangers – intimidating strangers from the posh school – felt like putting himself on show for all the world to see. Being tucked between the easel and the corner made him feel a little more secure.

It was stupid and he knew it. After all, you couldn't see anything on any other person's easel – the circle also helpfully prevented that so they couldn't copy or distract each other – but he still picked the easel in the corner.

The final bell hadn't gone for the schools final classes of the day, so Schofield was the first to arrive. He didn't mind that, it gave him a chance to pin the half-completed sketches from the graveyard up around the easel and start converting them into a drawing worth seeing without prying eyes hanging around.

At least, until a younger girl with waist length mousy brown hair wandered in. Her long hair was tied up in a simple ponytail and her uniform – his own lack of which was not the only thing that marked Schofield as different in this class but it was the most obvious – was a shambles. Her socks were down about her ankles, her skirt was rolled up a good six-inches above the regulation knee-height and there was something that Schofield guessed was ink spread across her white blouse, which was untucked.

The girl walked confidently right up to Schofield's easel and peered around curiously at the drawings of the graveyard gargoyles.

"They're freaky," she said without preamble, "Do you really not have anyone better to hang out with than dead people?"

"Dead people don't irritate me," Schofield retorted but entirely without bite.

He had a lot of patience for this girl. Skip Grady was sharp as a tack and had a mischievous streak a mile wide. Despite her rich parents and all the trappings of a privileged life, Skip didn't quite fit in at the posh school either. She spent twice as much time in detention as Schofield did and yet always walked out with a smile, like whatever had put her in there was totally worth it. Schofield had heard rumours of some tiny teddies, a Bunsen burner and a small fire that might have caused the entire science block to be evacuated. The exploding microwave in food tech however, wasn't just any old rumour, it was solid gold legend.

And nobody had ever asked why that poor student teacher had never come back.  
But they all knew he had left after just one lesson with Skip's class.

Skip was early too. The final bell still hadn't gone so she must have skipped out on the last few minutes of her class as well.

"Ms Price let you go early?" Schofield asked her, knowing full well that the answer was no.

Skip shrugged innocently.  
"Ms Price is an idiot," she said succinctly, "and I frikin' hate geography anyway."

Schofield snorted a laugh as the bell finally rang and other students began to trickle into the classroom one by one. Robert Simmons and Oliver Todd took the easels next to Schofield and Skip whilst all the other students gave them a wide berth.

Plenty of rumours had flown around the class about the Schofield boy.  
Most of them had been started by Skip, who thought it was funny that the other students were dumb enough to believe them. It had turned into a game with them, to see how ridiculous they could get before someone wised up. The latest had been that Schofield was enrolled in a NASA space training program and didn't have the time to attend normal school, hence the external class.

Shane was under no illusions, he knew that Rob and Ollie only hung around with him because Skip did and they were both sweet on her. Skip had these incredible hazel eyes that went from bottle green to golden brown and every colour in between.  
The more green they were, the more trouble she was thinking of causing.

Ollie and Rob were also best friends and seeing as Skip had no interest in either of them, she had made that abundantly clear, they had decided not to lose a friend over a girl neither of them could have anyway. Instead of any real rivalry, there was a friendly competition between them for Skip's favour. This week, Rob had brought enough of her favourite chocolate – peanut butter m&m's - to share with her during the class. Ollie, deathly allergic to peanuts, couldn't compete with that.

Skip, the bastard, played them both.

By the time the teacher arrived, Schofield was already immersed in his drawing – a classical gargoyle with a scrunched up face and pointed tongue, whose wings curled protectively around the gravestone he was guarding.

The four of them – Schofield, Skip, Rob and Ollie – traded banter back and forth as they worked.

('I didn't know you were interested in portraiture.'

'That's not a portrait, it's a pig.'

'So it's a picture of you then?'

'It's a gargoyle, dumbass.')

It was, Shane imagined, what having friends felt like.

When his hour long sojourn from reality was over, Schofield was the first to pack up his pencils and stash the large drawing pad away safely in the slot that was marked as his by a piece of masking tape with his name scrawled across it. With a hasty 'bye' to Skip and the others, he practically ran out the classroom and down the stairs before the teacher could call him back to examine his work.

If anyone asked, he had to catch a bus.  
He had to be home in time for dinner.

In reality, Schofield had no desire to be back at the Rileys' place in time for dinner. Not with a face that still looked like a pound of minced meat. No, he was hoping to time it right so that he would arrive back whilst Paula was still in the kitchen and Buck Riley Senior was still at work. That way, he should be able to avoid any awkward questions from them.

The bus pulled up just as he reached the stop and in the end, he did time it perfectly, slipping up the stairs and locking himself in his bedroom before Paula could stop him. She couldn't afford to stop long enough to chase after him, she was making some amazing smelling caramel thing and if she left it a minute too long, it would be an utterly ruined, burnt mess.

Schofield fell onto the bed facedown and tried to resign himself to a night of hunger pains – he daren't go down to fetch any dinner, amazing caramel desert or no – but it was okay, he had handled much worse before. Really, living with the Riley's – steady education and three square meals a day – was turning him soft.

From his bedroom, Shane could hear Buck Riley Senior come home and greet his wife and son; could hear the family settle down for dinner but the conversation was unusually subdued and didn't carry over the chink of cutlery and plates.  
His stomach on the other hand was perfectly audible.

Eventually, Mr and Mrs Riley took themselves to bed. Shane heard their soft footsteps on the landing, sneaking past his door cautiously as though they were trying not to wake him.  
The person he couldn't avoid however, was Buck Riley Junior.

Around 9 o'clock, a quiet knock rang out on Schofield's bedroom door. Buck let himself in without waiting for an answer. He had also brought with him a tray laden with a bowl of pasta and a plate laden with the leftovers from desert.

"I told them you were still feeling sick and wanted to just go to bed," he said, setting the tray down on the bed. "But I can't keep covering for you. If she thinks you're really sick, there'll be no keeping her out. She'll drag you to the doctors."

Without an invitation, Buck settled himself at the end of the bed and grabbed one of the pastries. Schofield reluctantly pulled himself upright. The previous night, Buck had helped him sneak into the house and straight up to his room to hide his injuries. Shane hadn't thought to ask him why he even cared.

"Thanks," Schofield mumbled, nodding his head at the bowl of pasta, dripping in thick creamy sauce but really, he meant it for more than that.

Buck didn't say anything, just focussed on peeling the paper off the pastry.  
"Where'd you go today?" He asked astutely after a long minute. "You weren't at sport."

"How do you know that?" Schofield replied, unable to keep a tone of accusation out of his voice.

"I was following you," Buck replied, rolling his eyes. "I've got nothing better to do with my time than stalk you. I saw the bus arrive back on my way to the student council meeting and you didn't get off it, idiot."

Schofield shrugged.  
"Swimming's not really my thing," he said, trying to downplay it. He had managed to keep his utter inability to swim a secret so far. It's hard to maintain a tough guy reputation if the teacher has to drag you out of the pool with the rescue hook. The whole flailing arms thing is a really bad look.

"But detention obviously is?" Buck retorted. He didn't look impressed but Shane didn't really care. He wasn't trying to impress anyone.

"Detention tomorrow's better than detention today," Shane replied.

"Oh yeah," Buck perked up, "You had your art class this afternoon, right? How's it going?"

Shane ducked his head a little, looking like he was simply busy with his pasta when in reality he was trying to hide the blush crawling up the back of his neck.  
"It's good," he said nonchalantly. "We've gotta get our major pieces ready for this exhibition thing the school's putting on this Friday, I think."

"You ready?" Buck prompted and Schofield nodded, "Yeah, mostly."

Shane tried to pass it off as no big deal but in truth, he'd had his centrepiece ready for weeks now, sitting in careful storage. He'd spent the better part of a weekend trawling the garbage dumps, trying to find an old frame and once he had, he'd then spent the rest of it cutting it down to size and distressing it with a bit of sandpaper. A fresh coat of lacquer over the old wood had brought it up a treat. His muscles ached for days afterwards but the final product had been worth it.

They sat in silence for a while – Schofield devouring his dinner and Buck picking at some loose threads on the blankets. It was weird, this, Schofield thought. Even though he had literally moved into the other boy's house and life, Shane and Buck hadn't really hung out very much.

"So," Shane said, breaking the silence, feigning reluctance as though he had plenty of better things to be doing on a Tuesday night. "What exactly did you get up to in your little nerd club student council?"

Riley huffed a laugh.  
"Well for starters, John Killian and Nick Tate got in an argument about the prom theme. Killian thinks that because his dad owns all the businesses in town that somehow means that he's in charge but Tate's no better, he's an arrogant little upstart with more connections than sense. Dallas eventually stepped in and threatened to bash their heads together if they didn't cut it out but in the end, Libby and I still ended up doing most of the work."

"I hate prom," he added as an afterthought.

Schofield had never been to one but still, he didn't really see the point and happily told Buck so.

"It's a chance for the girls to dress up and for the boys to prove how cool they are by netting the hottest girl," Buck explained.

"Not really my scene," Shane said shortly, getting up to drop the now empty bowl on the desk. On his way past, his foot must have nudged his schoolbag which rang with the unmistakable clink of bottles.

"Oh yeah," he said guiltily, pulling the six-pack of beer out, "I forgot about these. Do you want one?"

Buck looked at him incredulously.  
"Should I point out it's a school night?" He asked, quirking one thick eyebrow, "and I know I shouldn't ask where you got them."

"Your dad's liquor cabinet," Schofield retorted easily. "Don't be an idiot, Mother gave them to me."

Buck had heard a lot about the mysterious Mother but he'd never met her. He was beginning to think she was a figment of Schofield's imagination. The beers seemed to suggest that she either did exist or that Schofield was using her as a convenient cover-up if he did steal them, from Buck Riley Senior or otherwise.  
Buck preferred to give him the benefit of the doubt and wait patiently until the day he finally got to meet Mother.

As for Shane, he knew better than to risk his good standing with this family. In the homes, there were always too many kids to go around and the attention was spread thin. He learnt pretty damn quickly that bad attention was better than none. If throwing his sneakers through a window was the only way to get new ones when the old pair was two sizes too small, well, he'd do that. But Buck and Paula had seen to all his basic needs and then some, so he'd learnt to just try and keep out of sight.  
Maybe if he kept his head down and didn't make a nuisance of himself they would keep him.

Sometimes, Shane wanted to stay with the Riley family so bad it hurt and then it hurt so bad that he wanted to. He couldn't afford to get dependent on them.

He'd fuck it up eventually and they'd get sick of him.  
They'd send him back.  
Everyone always did eventually.

Schofield kicked the bottles under the bed with perhaps a little more force than was strictly necessary and Buck wisely let the topic drop.

The awkward silence resumed until Buck said quietly, "Sanchez said to tell you he's sorry. He just thought it would be a laugh."

"Hysterical," Shane retorted through clenched teeth.

"He also said that if you wanted, he'd give you a hand for real with the Spanish."  
Buck had spoken casually but Schofield knew he had been waiting for an opportunity to bring it up.

Schofield didn't say anything, so Buck held out the plate with the pastries on it.  
"Want one?" He asked tentatively, trying to recapture some of the easy conversation.

"What is it?" Schofield asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

An expression of astonishment and extreme delight crossed Buck's face.  
"You can't have never had a Portuguese tart before?" He said gleefully. "My mum makes the best ones!"

He shook the plate in Schofield's direction, making the pastries wobble ominously until Shane took one. Buck was right, the tart was amazing. The puff pastry was perfectly flaking, melting in his mouth. The smooth custard ran over his tongue in perfect contrast to the crunch of his teeth into the hard caramel topping. It was nothing short of perfection.

Buck sat back on his heels wearing a look of great smugness.

Together, both boys sat in silence until they had polished off the entire plate.

"Did your mum want to save those?" Shane asked, slightly regretfully. He didn't want to get into shit with Paula Riley, not when he was doing so well, but they had also been really good pastries. It was hard to regret eating them.

Buck shook his head.  
"Nah, they don't keep anyway. She knows if she leaves them out, they'll mysteriously vanish around Dad and I."

Buck got up and collected the plates, preparing to take them back downstairs and wash them. With a pang, Schofield realised he was meant to be doing the dishes that night.

He stopped at the door and looked back at Schofield as though he was tripping over words on the tip of his tongue. Shane saw the resolution cross his face as he obviously decided that whatever it was, it warranted saying.

"You know he's gay, right?" Buck said, "Sanchez, that is. That's why he quit the football team last year."

Schofield let that bit of news wash over him.

There was only one thing that he knew was worth causing shit over. If the families that were taking him in were going to give him the fire and brimstone lecture just because he liked boys a lot more than girls, he wanted to know from the start. It was better to be sent back than to put up with that sort of shit. There had been this one family. They hadn't sent him back to the state home. They had sent him to some sort of camp where they tried to pray – and when that didn't work, beat – the gay away. That time, Child Protection Services came and got him back.

So when he had arrived at the Rileys', he'd said in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to fuck boys, he would.  
They hadn't sent him back yet.

"He likes you," Buck said softly, cutting into Schofield's train of thought.

"He made me look like an idiot," Shane shot back.

Buck shrugged.  
"He talked to you, that's more than most people get."

Then shutting the door behind him, Buck left Shane alone with that thought.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **This story got 100 hits on the same day that one of my others, Little Wonders, hit 2000. I am a happy chappy! Thanks very much to all my readers. Even if I've never spoken to you, it means a lot to me that you're reading my stories.

Also, this chapter should probably come with a warning – there's some pretty triggery stuff in here about child abuse, domestic violence and suicide. I never really liked the way MR handled Schofield's childhood in AoT. It was good that he at least incorporated it into the story because I think it does explain a lot about the character but he did so, so briefly that I don't think it really gave enough weight to the horrors of any sort of abuse.

Chapter 5

Schofield tried to slink out of the classroom without attracting any attention. Most of the students were huddled around the front desk, sorting through a large stack of papers, trying to find their own name amongst them. Shane didn't want anything to do with that paper. He already knew he hadn't done well but seeing it in writing was always worse than the abstract knowledge. With all the successful students crammed in a bunch, there was a free path to the door and he made a bee-line for it.

Until he found his way blocked by none other than Mrs Cameron, offering him that damn sheet of paper that he really didn't want.

If it had been any other teacher, he would have pushed past her and ignored the stupid test.  
But this teacher was funny and nice, even if she taught a shit subject.  
And that look on her face looked remarkably like regret.

Well fuck that.

"I don't want to fail you, Shane," Mrs Cameron said. She did sound genuinely sorry but her damn melodic voice carried across the classroom and every other student looked up at him. He curled his hands into fists - so that the blush racing up the back of his neck was disguised as a flush of anger – grabbed the paper out of her hands and shoved through the door.

He already knew he was an idiot. He didn't need the whole class knowing too.

It was easy to feel angry – he was angry with Mrs Cameron, he didn't need her fucking pity, and he was angry with himself for letting her down anyway. Being let down was something he'd had a little too much of in his life.

Growing up, his mother had been his idol. His memories told him that even the bruises couldn't take away from how soft and warm and beautiful she was. Until she had put a bullet through her mouth and then she was cold and stiff and blood-soaked. He didn't blame her – her life was shitty but it would have been nice if she could have stuck around and they could have had it shitty together. Shane didn't remember much about her funeral but one memory stuck clear - what remaining family he had refusing to take him on. He hadn't minded about his father's sister turning him down, he wouldn't have wanted to go with them anyway. His grandfather had had a hard war and needed a quiet life and his grandma was getting too old to deal with a child anyway, especially one that was bound to have some seriously fucked-up issues. He might've wanted them to take him but he wouldn't blame them because they couldn't.  
He didn't have anyone else, so they turned him over to the state.

He didn't remember anything about his father's trial.  
He hadn't been allowed to watch any of it.

Last he had heard, his father had barely been out on parole for three days before he shot himself. It was fitting really, Shane thought, that his father had died the same way his mother had. After all the hurt and pain he had caused her, he hadn't been able to live without her.

Schofield had never felt let down by his father because he had no expectations of the bastard to begin with.

And really, it would have been easier if Mrs Cameron had no expectations of him either. Lord knows he'd proven to her again and again and again that he was a failure and yet, she kept insisting on believing in him.  
And he was only going to let her down.

As he stormed out of the classroom, her parting words had been that she would let him resit the test. Shane knew that if he didn't pass it this time, he would flunk her class entirely. If she was so damn determined to give him another chance, well, he'd show her. Shane Schofield could out-stubborn anyone any day of the week.

He would pass if it killed him and that would teach her.

And if he wanted to pass, he really only had one option. Slowly, as though each step was heavy with reluctance, he meandered his way across the oval to the empty bleachers, where he knew Sanchez spent his break time.

Whatever Buck Riley had thought, Shane knew about Sanchez. For starters, when the star halfback quits the football team, it's big news. When the star halfback quits the team because he's gay, it's seriously big news. Hell, Schofield doubted there was a single kid in the school who didn't know why Sanchez had quit the team. And secondly, he'd found that it's always better to know who the other queers are in the school. If he knew who they were, he could avoid getting lumped in with them. People were generally scared enough of that strange new foster kid in the school that he didn't get a hard time. If he hung out with them, that protection seemed to fade away and he was just another kid for the dumpsters.

If it weren't that the other kids were too frightened of either of them – Sanchez's reputation was as well cultivated as Schofield's own – Shane felt sure someone would have tried to set them up already.

It was a well-known fact that the school's resident hardass was a faggot.

Sanchez looked up as Schofield approached, squinting into the sun.  
"What do you want?"

"Need help with Spanish," Schofield mumbled back.

Sanchez snorted and Shane knew better than to expect an apology for the last time Sanchez had 'helped' him in Spanish.

"Suppose I could give you a hand," Sanchez drawled, leaning back with his arms outstretched behind him. He deliberately tensed muscles that were still carved from years of football and didn't bother to disguise the way his eyes flicked down Schofield's body and back up again, sizing him up. "What'll I get in return?"

"I'm sure we can work something out," Schofield replied, injecting just enough leer into his voice to rise to the other boy's challenge. He dropped to the ground, deliberately invading Sanchez's space.

"What do you hang out here for anyway?" Shane asking, jerking his head in the direction of the playing field, where some of the senior varsity guys were milling around. "Trying to torture yourself?"

Sanchez shrugged before levelling his cool brown eyes on Schofield's blue ones intensely.  
"Something like that," he said.

Just then, a soccer ball bounced off the back of Schofield's head and flew back into the arms of one smiling Buck Riley Junior.

"Hope I'm not interrupting," Buck teased and both boys presented him with matching scowls. "A couple of us were going to have a game if you wanna join?"

He held up the soccer ball and looked enthusiastic. Shane had had every intention of telling him to get lost but he looked so damn much like a puppy that what slipped out of his mouth was, "Yeah, whatever."

Schofield got to his feet at the same moment as Sanchez pushed himself upright in one smooth burst. He flicked his long dark hair out of his eyes with all the casual elegance of the very self-confident.

"Losers. Soccer is for people that can't play football, but," he left off, shrugging. The statement was bitterly self-depreciating hidden behind the guise of an insult. Everyone knew that Sanchez was one of those losers no longer welcome on the football team. "Haven't got anything better to do."

Shane had feigned reluctance enough times to know what it looked like. He smirked as they jogged across the playing fields, Sanchez hanging a carefully calculated half step behind them.

There was a small group of about half a dozen guys huddled on the second smaller field.

"This is Andy," Buck introduced the tallest of them, who looked as though he was in charge. "Andy Trent. He's putting the team together. Found a few more willing participants for you, Andy."

Trent gave a quick nod and a smile in Schofield and Sanchez's direction.  
"Good to have you on board," he said and went back to outlining the different positions. It wasn't until he tried to break them into teams to have a four-a-side game against each other that they ran into trouble. As he divided them up, the boys all seemed to take their first real look at each other.

Though he had heard of Andy Trent – senior, didn't hang out with most of the other jocks. He wasn't new at the school like Shane was but he had been mysteriously absent the last year. There were rumours about rehab – Shane didn't actually know any of the other boys there, other than Buck and Sanchez.

It seemed however, that some of the others knew of them.

"Aren't you those queers?" One of them – a tall, well-built boy – rounded on them. He nodded at Sanchez. "You are. You're the one that got kicked off the footy team. Probably tried in on with some other guy. Well you're not coming here and getting your kicks off us instead."

Sanchez lip was curling in an effort to maintain his cool disdain but Shane could see a muscle jumping in his jaw, could see that Sanchez was only an inch from losing it.

"Well, are you?" The other boy demanded, voice rising angrily.

Sanchez took a half step forward and that was all the incentive Shane needed to push past him, landing himself right between Sanchez and the other boy.

"And what if we are?" He growled, curling his hands into fists and deliberately, loudly, cracking his knuckles. Behind him, Shane could see out of the corner of his eye, Sanchez crossed his arms across his chest, flexing muscles still cut from years of football. "You got a problem with that?"

The other boy looked discomforted. He hadn't expected them to not deny it or to stand up for themselves. Schofield had guessed correctly that most of the other kids who had been tossed in dumpsters or had their heads shoved down toilets by this boy didn't fight back. He wouldn't pick on someone who would. So it was easy to intimidate him.

Trent forced his way between them, putting an arm out and pushing them apart.

"Drop it," he said sharply. "I don't give a damn what you jerk off to, I only care about what you can do with a soccer ball."

"Bet you like balls, don't you," the other boy spat out.

"I said drop it, Mario," Andy Trent yelled at exactly the same time as Schofield retorted. "Oh I've got mad ball skills. Happy to demonstrate."

Trent gave each boy a quick shove, blew his whistle and tossed the ball up in the air.

They had nearly an hour to run around and work out some of the excess aggression. The kid called Mario took every chance he got to slide at Schofield's ankles, trying to trip him. So Schofield was particularly satisfied when he swooped in and stole the ball right out from under Mario's nose.

By the time Trent called them back in, they were sweaty and tired and mostly run out of anger.

Sanchez had proven himself an elegant and agile player but powerful from his years of football. He tried – and failed – to conceal how pleased he was to get given the glory position of striker. Shane, on the other hand, was the hard worker who committed to everything. He was also one of the fittest kids on the field. So he was assigned to the midfield where he would be expected to get involved in everything. Mario, by far the bulkiest of the lot, was sent to defence along with Buck.

"We'll still need a few more players if we want to compete," Trent said as he called them all in, "But good first effort. See you around school."

Shane didn't much feel like going back to class after that though. It had been a pretty good lunch break by his standards and he really didn't want to ruin the rest of his day. So instead he jumped over the back fence and grabbed his sketch pad and headed for town – his last few pieces for the exhibition could still use some work.

It wasn't until he was in Charleston – the AP studio art teacher happily swallowed his lie about free afternoon periods and wanting to use the time productively to work on his exhibition. Like all the best lies, it was half true – when his cell phone buzzed with a message.

There was an address followed by the message, 'My place, 8:00. I owe you one.'

Shane smiled wryly as he slipped the phone back in his pocket. That was pretty damn close to a thanks.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: **It's been a while since I've actually had to use any Spanish and I mostly use it at an academic level, not for casual speech so if you spot a mistake, let me know!

Also, I should probably warn you, updates are going to be slow at the moment for all my stories. I foolishly reinstalled the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and have spent the last twenty hours playing it… Will probably spend the next twenty as well.

Chapter 6

That night, Schofield found himself knocking on the door of a house on the edges of the suburbs. The house was weather-beaten with a porch that was sagging, paint that was peeling and gutters starting to pull away from the edges. A few pairs of sneakers lay in a haphazard pile beside the door mat which proclaimed 'The House was Clean Last Week, Sorry you missed it.'  
It was quarter past eight.  
He didn't want to look too eager.

Sanchez opened the door. He had changed out of the undoubtedly messy and sweaty clothing he had worn to the impromptu soccer practice and instead, had thrown on a pair of threadbare looking jeans and a Black Sabbath t-shirt that, judging from the concert date printed on it in worn lettering, was older than he was.

"Hey," Schofield said as Sanchez held the door open, letting him in.

Sanchez didn't reply but he did offer a little nod in Schofield's direction. He gestured up the stairs.  
"We can work in my room," he said.

It wasn't a question but Shane nodded as though it was anyway.

Sanchez's bedroom was a mess. In one corner was a large pile of clothes strewn across an apparently empty dresser. The bed was unmade and several pairs of scuffed shoes were kicked under it. There were bits and pieces everywhere. Schofield thought he saw what looked like half a skateboard poking out from underneath and overflowing cd stack. The desk was similarly overflowing with a never ending stream of school work. There were patches on the walls where bluetack had pulled the paint off, which were all covered in posters of the same eleven men. Shane could think of a couple of prize lines about gay boys and football posters but given Sanchez's history with the school team, he quickly decided they might be in bad taste.

"Your team?" he asked instead, jerking his head at the posters.

Sanchez nodded, looking a little less surly.  
"Charleston Buccaneers. They're a college team. I drag my mum to the games on the weekend."

"Not your dad?" Schofield regretted the question as soon as it had left his mouth as shutters sprang up behind Sanchez's eyes and his lips closed into his usual cold smirk.

"No dad. Bastard left when I was three," he replied, straining to keep his voice casual as though he couldn't give a damn. Schofield knew that expression too damn well to call him out on it.

"Well you're doing better than me," Schofield retorted jokingly, cutting through the tension, "One's better than none."

Sanchez snorted and cleared a space just large enough for two on the bed and flung himself down.  
"You're lucky man," he said, "getting to live with the Riley's."

Shane couldn't – and wouldn't have wanted to – argue with that.

There wasn't really another option – even if he could have found space on the floor, he would've looked an idiot with Sanchez looking down at him from the bed – so Shane shrugged and took the spot next to Sanchez. The bastard has positioned the textbook in such a way that Schofield would only be able to see it properly if he lay down on his stomach close enough to Sanchez that their shoulders bumped against each other's.

"So what don't you get?" Sanchez asked, rifling through the contents page of the textbook.

"A better question would be what do I get," Shane replied, laughing.

Sanchez's lips quirked in a way that looked suspiciously like a real smile.  
"We can work with that," he said.

They worked steadily for a while until Schofield's stomach betrayed him with a loud growl.

"Hungry?" Sanchez asked, a single eyebrow raised and a half smile playing at his lips. "My mum makes the best empanadas," he continued when Shane didn't deny it. "They're probably still hot."

They took the stairs two at a time, landing noisily in the kitchen, the air of which was thick with delicious smells, and coming face to face with Sanchez's mother. The woman barely reached her son's shoulders and yet she seemed to radiate fierceness. Directly behind her, Shane noticed a small wooden sign hanging above the kitchen sink.

It read 'Mothers of Teenagers know why Animals eat their Young.'

"You have a boy in your bedroom, Paulo?" She demanded, hands on her hips, surveying both boys with a keen eye and a familiar smirk.

"We were just studying, mom," Sanchez explained quickly. "We got hungry."

Mrs Sanchez levelled a glare on him that would have made even Mother quail until under it, Sanchez blushed.  
Actually blushed.  
Shane had to look twice just to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. No, there was definitely a red stain creeping up the back of Sanchez's neck and across his cheeks.

"Studying is very exerting, is it no?" She replied, the smirk becoming more pronounced. Thankfully, Shane's stomach chose that moment to interrupt again and her smile became indulgent, instead of amused. "Well eat up then."

She pushed a plate of empanadas towards them as she turned back to the sink, muttering a constant stream of rapid Spanish beneath her breath. Sanchez accepted the plate gratefully and the pair scuttled from the room before she could embarrass them further.

"Y si no están estudiando, a menos ser seguro," Mrs Sanchez called to their retreating backs, a final parting shot.

As they ran back up the stairs, Shane swore he heard gentle laughter.

"What did she say?" Shane asked at exactly the same moment as Sanchez said "thank god you're failing Spanish."

They collapsed back onto the bed, catching their breath and stuffing their faces full of empanadas when Shane caught a good look at the pile of reading material on Sanchez's bedside table.

"Seriously?" he said, holding up a copy of 'War and Peace' which had been sitting on top of an AP Physics textbook. AP fucking Physics. "You're secretly a nerd aren't you?"

Sanchez shrugged, "It's my English text."

"Only nerds actually read their English texts," Schofield retorted. "That's what spark notes are for."

Sanchez laughed.  
"Well don't tell anyone," he said, "I've got a reputation to maintain. Besides, you're not as dumb as you look yourself."

Shane raised an eyebrow.  
"I'm failing Spanish," he replied deadpan.

Sanchez shrugged, looking thoughtful as he talked around a mouthful of empanada.  
"Buck told us you didn't go to school last year," Sanchez said and in his head, Schofield supplied 'or the year before,' but didn't interrupt. "So you're starting from a disadvantaged spot but still managing to keep up and aren't you taking that AP class any everything? Sounds like you're a little smart yourself."

Shane hadn't thought about it like that. Between running away with Mother and being shuffled around the different foster homes and being rescued from that conversion camp and then the therapy the state had forced him into to talk about the conversion camp when all he wanted to do was fucking forget about it and then they'd thought him a little delicate and nobody wanted to make him do stuff he didn't want so he took advantage of it and just didn't go to school; yeah, his education had been a little fucked.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," Sanchez said and there was that smirk again.

"No one would believe you anyway," Schofield shot back and Sanchez snorted a laugh.

He seized a crumpled piece of paper from amongst the piles scattered across the bed and scribbled another few words down onto it quickly before handing it to Schofield, saying "Just the one more example, then I think you've got it."

"¿Me gustas?" Schofield read aloud, trying to decipher Sanchez's cramped chicken scratch. "Am I reading that right?"

"Absolutely," Sanchez replied with more than a hint of a leer. "You know what it means?"

"Gustar is to like, right?" Shane said, trying to think it through. "So, something like 'you like me?'"

Sanchez shook his head.  
"Gustar is more along the lines of 'to please' than 'to like.' Gustas then is the second person singular, 'you please' and then 'me' is the first person pronominal direct object, 'me.' So it's literally 'you please me'- "

"No way am I falling for that again," Schofield interrupted. "I'm not saying that in class."

"-But a better translation into English," Sanchez continued, the only hint of the interruption in the slight widening of his smirk, "would be "I like you," because if something pleases me then it's safe to say that I like it. You've just got to swap the subject and object around. In the Spanish, 'you' is the subject because 'you're' the one doing the pleasing whereas in English, 'I'm' the subject because I'm the one doing the liking and vice versa. 'I'm' the one being pleased by 'you' in the Spanish so 'I'm' the object whereas 'you're' the one being liked by 'me' in the English, so 'you're' the object. It all adds up to the same thing really. You follow?"

Shane nodded and smiled as he said, "Not at all."

Sanchez snuffed a laugh. "Well, we have been working for a while. Don't want to overtire your brain too much, it's probably never worked this hard. "

Shane seized a pillow and threw it at his head.

"Seriously," Sanchez protested, "We could play a video game? I'll put the subtitles in Spanish so that we're studying at the same time?"

There was something in his voice that made that sound like a seriously inviting idea and something low in Schofield's stomach wanted him to stay but it was past ten and even more so, Shane really didn't want to get into too much shit with the Rileys.

So he said, "I can't, sorry. I've really gotta get home."

With a pang, he realised he'd referred to the Rileys' house as home. His home.  
He thought he'd grown out of that sort of naïve optimism years ago.

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Sanchez replied, schooling his features to cover something that Schofield thought looked like disappointment but then again, he was still sort of reeling with the realisation of exactly how much he'd let the Rileys get to him, so he could've been mistaken.

"I'll see you tomorrow then?" Shane asked and was rewarded with a surly nod.

"Thanks for the help," he added, turning back just as he passed through the door and Sanchez jerked his head again but more genuinely this time.

He didn't see him out the front door.

The walk back to the Rileys' house – not his house, he was careful to think – in the cooler night air gave Schofield plenty of time to mull over all the Spanish they had worked through. He tried to drag it all to the forefront of his mind and keep it there, at least until tomorrow morning.

The Rileys were all asleep and the lights all off when Schofield finally reached the house. He pushed open the door slowly to try and stop it from creaking but that failed terribly. So instead, he pushed it open with one smooth shove, hoping that the one loud but quick creak wouldn't wake the sleeping Rileys. He dashed across the floor, avoiding the parts he knew would squeak beneath his feet and made for the carpeted staircase, which would muffle his footsteps. On his way past the kitchen, his stomach – which was already filled with empanadas – began to bubble with uncomfortable, hot guilt.

A plate of meatloaf, untouched and now stone cold, had been left out for him.

Stomach writhing, Schofield realised he had forgotten to tell Paula and Buck Senior that he wouldn't be home for dinner. The left out plate didn't feel like a rebuke. It felt like they were hurt and that hit him like a kick to the gut. Carefully, he deviated to the kitchen, wrapped the plate in glad wrap and deposited it in the kitchen. Paula Riley worked the early morning shift and Buck Senior would be out yelling at recruits before the sun was up, so they would both be gone before he had a chance to see them in the morning. Instead, he left out a carefully worded note – Explaining where he had been and apologising for forgetting to tell them. He managed not to include a plea not to send him back, that was far too desperate sounding. Instead, he thanked them for leaving the meatloaf out and promised to take it to school for lunch the next day.  
He had to hope they understood that meant he wanted to stay.

It wasn't until much later that night, after he had fallen into his own bed, revising the Spanish in his mind again, that he realised Sanchez's last example might not have been strictly for grammatical purposes.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: **Dammit I hate the muses at the moment. Whilst giving me absolutely no desire to write, they're flooding my brain with a new idea for a Schofield/Book II story. I told them firmly that they've got to wait until this story is finished first and a few more of the Interludes are written. Not even mentioning finally getting Little Wonders done.

You know what I am excited for, MR's new book – The Tournament. Thank heavens he releases books pretty regularly as the fandom tends to liven up when there's something new to squeal over. Admittedly, it sounds very like contest but in a historical setting. That doesn't bother me. I liked contest and I like history, so the two together work for me

Also, you know what is a lot of fun, typing in two different languages interspersed between each other. Poor computer is confused.

I probably should've explained this stuff before I started writing this story given that the majority of my readers are Australian and the American School system is crazy. 'Middle School' is grades 6-8 and occasionally 9. 'Junior High' is a subset of Middle School and is usually grades 8 and 9. 'High School' or 'Senior High' is grades 9-12 where 9 = freshman, 10 = sophomore, 11 = junior, 12 = senior. How it is that year 9 manages to be in all three is beyond my comprehension, rather like year 9 itself.

I've also put the rating of this story up to reflect some of the content in this chapter. Bear in mind that Shane is 16 and Sanchez is at least 17 if not 18, so it's all above board and legal here. This chapter is long and dramatic and smutty, as an apology for my slow updates. I've also come to a conclusion – generally, I write better foreplay than actual sex. I have now worked my way around this issue by taking the actual sex out of the equation. This is the longest sex scene I've ever written and yet, nobody ever gets their clothes off. I'd like to know what you think about it because in all honesty, I'm pretty happy with it.

Chapter 7

Schofield knew from the moment the alarm blared through his sleep for the second time that it wasn't going to be a good day. He'd already hit the snooze button once so not only was he running late for school, he'd been dreaming about smooth skin the colour of copper stretched over taut forearms and the alarm had interrupted the best part. He didn't have the time to hit snooze again for hopefully another five minutes of very satisfying sleep nor enough to jerk off properly in the shower. So instead, he was forced to rush through a bloody cold, bloody quick and bloody unsatisfying shower, grab whatever clothes he'd left lying at the foot of the bed and stuff a piece of toast in his mouth to eat as he jogged to school because naturally, he'd missed the fucking bus.

The detention slip tacked to his locker just finished it off.

He couldn't remember how he got through the first two periods of the day – his brain already stuffed with Spanish, was refusing to absorb any more information right now, thank you very much, no matter how much his teachers insisted it was vital for their SAT's. He did recall muttering Spanish under his breath throughout maths in a vain attempt to keep it in his head until the girl sitting next to him began to shoot him looks that both questioned his sanity and threatened to break his balls if he broke her concentration one more time.

By the time fourth period – his Spanish class – arrived, he was a mess.

Mrs Cameron settled him in a quiet classroom next door to re-sit the test with a kindly smile and a quick squeeze to the shoulder which Shane was pretty sure was technically illegal – teachers weren't supposed to initiate any sort of contact with their students, especially not attractive young female teachers with their older male students – but he was jumpy and the gesture was appreciated.

When he flipped the paper over, the writhing that had been going on in his stomach settled into a solid ball, falling like a heavy weight. The words spun before his eyes in a language that would never make sense to him.  
He thought he might puke.

Taking a deep breath, he stopped and tried to focus on the first question.  
Break it down into little parts, Sanchez had said, it'll make it more manageable.

_Finish the following sentence with the correct form of the verb 'Gustar' and an appropriate activity_

_A mi mejor amigo y a mi __ ._

Shane could practically hear Sanchez's voice in his head.  
'me gusta, I like; te gusta, you like; nos gusta, we like.'

nos gusta jugar futbol, Shane wrote.

_We like to play football. _

Yeah, he could do this.

When Mrs Cameron came back in to collect the paper exactly one hour later, he pushed his chair back with a noisy scrape of relief and let out a breath that felt like he'd been holding for all of the test. Maybe it wasn't full marks but he was pretty damn sure it was a pass.

Mrs Cameron took the paper with a soft smile in Schofield's direction and he offered her a shark toothed grin in return.

And his mood was only on the rise when he remembered – it was Thursday; and on Thursday afternoons, whilst the middle school kids were forced to stay in class for all the good subjects that the high schoolers could drop if they so desired, like health, all the senior school had two free periods dedicated to independent study.  
Which meant that every one of them spent it playing computer games or at the mall or any other normal teenage activity of their choice except for studying.

Shane normally used the time to draw but today, his exhibition was finalised – all he needed to do was hang it – he didn't have to study because it looked like he wasn't going to completely flunk Spanish and miraculously, none of his teachers had stuck him with homework (or maybe they had but he hadn't been paying enough attention to notice).

He was going to go play soccer with people he had a sneaking suspicion may have become his friends when he wasn't looking.

He jogged off to the playing fields, feeling more alive than he had in weeks.

It was going to be a good afternoon.

It should've been a good afternoon.

It wasn't.

It took a dramatic turn for the worse the minute he set foot inside the change room. He'd barely taken two steps inside when Mario's voice rang out, "Aw, hell no. No queers allowed."

Schofield stopped dead, his hands curling into fists, internally cursing himself and his stupidity.  
He should've known something like this would happen.

"It's like us going into the girls change rooms," Mario pushed further, louder, inciting murmurs of support from the assembled boys. "It's sick."

Shane spun on the spot, pausing only long enough to ascertain that Sanchez hadn't arrived yet, until he was face to face with Mario. He had to supress a laugh. The other boy looked ridiculous, standing there seething in only his gym shorts and a single sock, the other one clutched loosely in his hand.

An undercurrent of unease snaked through the room as they faced off.

Schofield smirked.  
"You got a problem with me?" He said evenly but with more than ample deadly intent.

For a moment, Mario looked ready to recoil. His face flickered with a brief display of fear before he could school it into a smirk full of bravado.

"Glad you've finally worked that out," he retorted to the amused snorts of the other boys.

Shane looked him up and down, deliberately letting his eyes linger until Mario squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze.  
"I wouldn't worry," he said calmly, each word aimed like a dart. "You've got nothing to be interested in."

Mario's smirk turned into a scowl and he crowded up right into Schofield's space, pushing the dirty, balled up sock into his face and sending him reeling backwards with a violent shove but Shane didn't mind. There were titters of laughter running through the room – this time at Mario's expense – and Shane knew he had won.

"Back off Mario," he even heard Buck mutter.

But Mario – who would never be content unless he got the last word in – had one last barb to throw.

"Bet that other faggot's got plenty for you to be interested in," he spat out.

Schofield stopped, his t-shirt pulled half off.  
By the time it hit the ground, his fist had already sunk into Mario's stomach.

Mario might have thought himself tough but with every blow he tried to land, Schofield could see right through him. Mario fought lazily, with wild swinging blows that barely glanced Schofield. They'd leave some good bruises but no real harm done. He fought like a boy who spent plenty of time wandering the neighbourhood streets, terrorising kids and cats and old ladies alike, acting the punk but every day, he got to go home to a ready meal and a soft bed.  
He fought to wind people up, not bring them down.

And Shane, well, Shane knew how to bring someone down.

He landed three crisp blows in quick succession.

To Mario's stomach and kidney's – to bring him to his knees.

And one more to his nose – just for spite.

As he felt the soft cartilage give beneath his curled fingers with a sickening crunch, another larger hand fell on his own shoulder, yanking him violently back from the fight.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing," Andy Trent yelled as he wrapped an arm around Schofield's chest, restraining him as though he might try and re-join the fight but Shane knew he didn't need to. Mario was already a pitiful sight, down on his knees, a mixture of blood and snot pouring down his face, thoroughly beaten. Schofield swallowed a few deep breaths and glanced around the room. For the first time, he thought he might have earned the looks of fear on their faces.

And standing alone in a corner, his face whiter than the walls, was Buck.

"Anybody else got a problem with Shane," Trent roared, shaking him a little in his grasp. There was no reply, the other boys stared shame-faced at the ground so Trent continued, "Good. Now you," he spat at Mario, "get yourself to the nurse's office and as for you," he rounded upon Schofield, "get the fuck out of here until you learn a new problem solving method."

Practically running outside, he stopped only long enough to grab his backpack and shirt off the ground. Shane was more than happy to take that advice. As the adrenaline dissipated, he could feel Mario's blood still warm on his hands. His legs felt like they would hold him no longer and his stomach lurched uncomfortably. He could still see all their faces, all scared of him. Buck's white face, scared too.  
He felt sick.

He loosed his fist into the unforgiving brick wall of the change rooms, his knuckles scraping raw against the white wash.

Mario would go to the nurse. The nurse would find out what happened. Then the principal would find out what happened. Then the Rileys would find out what happened and then it was all over for him.  
They'd send him back.

Hastily pulling the shirt back over his head, he began to walk.

With each step, his sneakers scuffed against the sidewalk as if he were dragging them along. His shoulders felt like a heavy weight and each step was an effort. He wandered aimlessly because the only place he knew of was the Riley's house and he sure as hell couldn't go back there now. Shane told himself it was the cold wind that stung the wounds on his knuckles and his eyes because he didn't want to think about how stupid he'd become; how badly he'd wanted to stay.

Maybe Mother would let him kip on her couch for a few days. He didn't have any change for the bus but he had walked further distances than that to Charleston. He'd make it before midnight.

In his pocket of his jeans, his cell phone began to buzz but he ignored it.  
He couldn't face Buck Riley Senior's disappointment just yet and Paula's would be even worse.

It became insistent and when he couldn't ignore it any longer, he yanked it out, fully intending to hurl it against the nearest wall when he noticed the name.

It wasn't either Buck Riley, Senior or Junior and it wasn't Paula Riley.

It was bloody Sanchez.

He opened the first message out of curiosity.

_What the fuck?!_ It read.

_Where are you?_ came next but it was the last one that really got him. _Are you okay?_

Which was when he remembered that the Riley's place wasn't the only place he could go. His feet sort of took over and steered him on the path to Sanchez's house without his brain having any clear idea of what he was going to do once he got there but that turned out not to be a problem as neither member of the Sanchez household was there when he arrived. So Schofield found himself hunched over, his knees drawn up to his chest, sitting huddled on their front porch, listening to the gentle creaks of the house around him. The wind whistled through the trees in the front yard, making the chains of an old tyre swing groan with long disuse. A brief smile flickered across Shane's face – thinking of Sanchez as a much smaller, less cool version of the current one swinging high with careless abandon – as he wrapped his arms around his chest, wishing he'd brought something to keep the wind off his bare skin.

But then again, when he'd left the house that morning, he hadn't been thinking much beyond his Spanish test – strange to think how easily he'd let himself become ensconced in the life here, that school marks could have even become a factor to worry about, above keeping his mouth shut and a roof over his head.

When he'd left that morning, he'd assumed he'd be going back.

Schofield didn't know how long he'd been sitting there but darkness had settled around him. He kept shifting restlessly on the porch because if he didn't keep moving, the porch light would flicker back off again, plunging him into sudden darkness in which the trees seemed to be leering at him, their branches reaching over in the wind to tap his shoulders and every shadow seemed threatening.

His stomach rumbled loudly and he actually jumped, startled.

Damn, he really needed to eat, if only to help get his head back on straight.

The sound of soft, slow footfalls across the leaf strewn garden was less disconcerting seeing as he had been sitting there for hours waiting for someone. Now he just had to hope that it was Sanchez and not his mother who would be first home. How the latter would react to finding a random young man sitting on her doorstep with a black eye and bloodied knuckles, he didn't want to find out. Shane couldn't be sure but they sounded more like the heavy footsteps of a man, instead of a woman. If he really strained his ears, he thought he could make out the pattern of Sanchez's swagger in the crunching leaves.

The crunching stopped at exactly the same moment as Sanchez said "What are you doing here?"

He had stopped just short of the light cast by the pathetic porch lamp so Shane could only see his basic shadowed outline and hear his seemingly dismembered voice.

He stepped into the light – normally haughty feature troubled – at exactly the same moment as Schofield muttered, "Didn't have anywhere else to go."

He knew it sounded pathetic.

"You must be fucking freezing," Sanchez said, striding over to him and wrapping one warm hand firmly around Schofield's bicep and the goose bumps that spread rapidly across his skin weren't all strictly due to the cold. "Why didn't you break in and borrow a jumper?"

Schofield laughed, "Contrary to popular belief, I can't actually jimmy a lock and I can't afford to pay for a broken window."

Sanchez hadn't let go of his arm, his fingers spread across the muscle.

"Well then," he replied, "I guess I'll have to teach you."

They were bloody close and Sanchez wasn't moving away.

For a long moment, Schofield thought he could read the same internal struggle going on behind Sanchez's eyes. He couldn't keep his own from wandering down to Sanchez's mouth, flushed dark, and back up his eyes, so brown they were practically the inky black of the night sky. The other boy even made an abortive jerk, as though for a moment, he might have tried to kiss him but it was gone as fast as it came. They hung there for a long, awkward moment until Sanchez's pink tongue flickered out to swipe across his dry lips and he cleared his throat.

"We should probably go inside," he said but it wasn't the normal Sanchez confidence laced drawl. He sounded almost nervous.

Shane just nodded as the fingers still wrapped around his arm loosened, falling limp to Sanchez's side as he fiddled with his keys in the other. Together they stood in the darkened hallway until Sanchez cleared his throat, the noise cutting through the tense silence.

"Want a drink?" Sanchez said, his voice catching in his throat.

Shane didn't yet trust himself to speak so he settled for nodding again and Sanchez led him through to the small kitchen, flicked the light switch and swiped a pair of beers from the fridge, which Shane gladly accepted. It had been a shithouse day and now his mouth was inexplicably dry.

They both fiddled with the pull-tabs on the beer cans until they popped open with a sharp hiss, neither one looking at the other.

"Thanks," Shane said around the first swallow, letting the bitter liquid wash some of the blood from his mouth. As it slid down to his stomach, it was almost like fire burning courage back into him. "So your mum is out?"

Sanchez nodded, saying, "She works the night shift, won't be home for hours yet."

His voice was even, betraying not even a hint of emotion – neither uncertainty nor desire – but the absence of a leer was more than enough to tell Schofield what he needed to know. He set the can down on the bench, catching Sanchez's eye with the movement and refusing to drop it afterwards. He crossed the room with deliberate steps, making his intent clear in case Sanchez wanted to stop this right here and now but instead, he surged forward when Shane was barely a step away from him, clashing their bodies together.

It would have worked if not for Sanchez's enthusiasm. Instead of smoothly pressing Sanchez into the counter, they lunged at each other, scrabbling for purchase in desperation. Schofield's hands fisted into Sanchez's shirt, holding him back as much as he was drawing him closer. Their lips didn't quite meet at first, instead there was a clumsy bumping of noses and a moment where Sanchez's teeth scraped hard against a split lip Shane didn't realise he'd acquired and he yelped in pain.

Sanchez's arms came up immediately to break Schofield's grip and closed around his wrists, pushing them back down to waist level. Both their eyes were wide open and Shane watched – not even bothering to try and wrestle control of his arms back, although he was curious if he could, they were pretty evenly matching but that was a thought for later – watched as Sanchez's tongue flashed out to swipe at the dark bead of blood on his lip, watched it disappear back into his own mouth.

Then they were kissing properly, as though the flood gates had opened and they could do nothing more than drown in it. Shane's hands landed on Sanchez's shoulders, dragging him closer until they were pressed against each other, whilst Sanchez teased one across the small of Shane's back and brought the other up to run one broad thumb across the scar that marred his face. Their teeth clashed and tongues fought and Shane could taste his own blood between them. He knew he was stupid to think this could make anything better, stupid to get involved at all at this point but all he really knew right then was that he wanted right now and he didn't care too much about the afterwards part.

Their legs tangled together until Shane was surprised that they even managed to make it to the wall without tripping over each other but then Sanchez pushed his thigh between Schofield's legs and all that friction was right there and he stopped caring about anything at all that wasn't rolling his hips into it.

He stifled a groan by sinking his teeth into the other boy's shoulders, simultaneously loving being pinned to the wall by Sanchez's broad, toned bulk but also fighting for control. Even jerking his hips forward into Sanchez's hard muscle, he couldn't bring them close enough to reciprocate, the bulge in Sanchez's jeans remained tantalisingly out of reach.

Somehow, Sanchez snaked a hand between their desperately close bodies to rub hard against Shane's clothed erection and the pressure from all sides was more than enough to send him hurtling over the edge in an embarrassingly short amount of time. It was all he could do to press his forehead into Sanchez's shoulder and let out a string of curses, 'fuck, shit, fuck oh fuck,' as he came.

"I can't believe I did that," he muttered into the hot skin at the base of Sanchez's neck. Pressing his lips there, he could taste the salty tang of sweat.

"What? Came in your pants like an angsty hormonal teenager?" Sanchez said with a leer as he pulled back to admire the pretty string of dark purple bruises he'd left trailing upwards from Schofield's collarbone to just behind his ear. "In all fairness, it's not so bad if you actually are an angsty hormonal teenager."

Partly because his legs weren't going to hold out much longer with aftershocks still rocking his body and partly because turnabout's fair play, Shane let himself fall to his knees. It took even him by surprise how much he liked being trapped between Sanchez's solid, steady, shape and the wall. He undid the zip on Sanchez's jeans as slow as he could manage, teasing him with a wicked grin. Even when he had finally got it all the way down, barely rubbing the palm of his hand against the exposed soft fabric, Sanchez's dark grey boxers did a good job of holding him in. He covered the bulge with his mouth, alternating between flicking his tongue out and sucking hard until the cotton was wet with saliva and the bitter tasting pre-cum and Sanchez was bracing himself with one hand against the wall and the other digging into Shane's shoulder until he was sure it would leave marks.

For all that he's a snarky, mouthy bastard the rest of the time, Sanchez was surprisingly quiet as his orgasm tore through him. He came with little more than a choked grunt and Shane didn't care that his own jeans were now cold and wet and sticky with his own release as he watched the stain spread across Sanchez's briefs with smug delight.

Sanchez slumped onto the floor to join him and they knelt together there like that, sticky and messy, breathing heavily with their knees digging into the hard wooden floors.

It was Sanchez who broke the silence first.  
"So you want to talk about today?" He asked, his hands finding Schofield's thighs and running up and down them.

"Nope," Shane managed to choke back, pressing his forehead into Sanchez's until they were breathing the same air and Sanchez's hands had come up to tangle in the short hair at the back of his neck in a silent 'okay.'

It was then, of all times, that he remembered he had taken the forgotten meatloaf from last night for a school lunch he'd been too nervous to eat and now his body could stand it no longer. He was so hungry it was starting to hurt.

And besides, if it was going to be his last chance to eat Paula Riley's meatloaf, he wasn't going to pass that up.

"I've got some leftovers in my bag," he muttered. "We can heat them up if you're hungry."

Sanchez got up and retrieved his school bag from where he'd hastily dropped it at the door. Pulling out a red plastic lunchbox, he gave Shane a quizzical look with one elegantly arched eyebrow.

Shane just shrugged.  
It was the best he'd been able to do at short notice.

As Sanchez stuffed the leftovers into the microwave, Shane picked himself up off the floor and found his way to the living room. He slumped into the nearest couch and tried not to think. Luckily, Sanchez was back, waving a plate full of steaming hot meatloaf under his nose, so he didn't have to try for very long. With another plate for himself, Sanchez flung himself down onto the couch beside him and reached for the remote, wordlessly.

"Do you want to stay the night?" He eventually asked around a mouthful of meatloaf.

"Yeah, thanks," Shane replied, too damn tired to add any more.

They ate in silence for a while until Shane's eyelids refused to stay open any longer and the empty plate very nearly clattered to the floor. Sanchez jumped up to drop them in the sink whilst Shane tried to arrange himself comfortably on the couch to sleep. But despite his exhaustion, his mind refused to stop whirring and within a few short moments he found himself back to worrying about what would happen to him; where they would send him next; how his life would be now without the Rileys, without Buck, without Sanchez. He didn't have any words to express his gratitude when Sanchez flopped back onto the couch and turned the television to the most inane midnight drivel that he could find. It was the gentle flickering and the mindless, soft babble that soon had them both dropping off.

Before the deep, steady unconsciousness of sleep could claim him, Schofield had one last thought – Really, Mario had been right about one thing, there was plenty about Sanchez that interested him.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: **I've got to say, I'm seriously grateful that we're nearly at the end of this thing. It's been so long since I finished a story that it's making me nervous!

Writing things like this story always gets me thinking about homophobia. A couple of weeks ago, it was IDAHO – the international day against homophobia (I don't know what the 'o' stands for…) – and someone asked me if homophobia was really an issue any more. At the time, I answered that transphobia is probably a bigger issue than homophobia (and it is, I still stand by that) but literally a few days later, I stumbled onto a homophobic website. This week, I went to a party where every second word out of the other guests' mouths was something homophobic. Now normally, I'd rant about it to you guys but seeing as I'm actually using my livejournal properly, I'll put the long rant there instead. Here, I just want to say, homophobia is still a very, very real thing. This is what my high school was like (minus the sex and happy ending) and I'm sure this is the sort of thing that a lot of other gay people can relate to and that, in our supposedly developed world, is just pathetic.

I've also been doing heaps of research on the American School system and for the life of me, I just can't figure it out. If you're American, feel free to explain it to me. If you're not, then hopefully like me, you'll just not worry about any potential innacuracies. My understanding of the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) is that it is a college level program that students undertake so that they can earn a commission and a bachelor degree at the same time and is one of the most popular methods of becoming a marine officer. It's also one of the most challenging. An offshoot of this is their high school courses which can be taken as an alternative to physical education. Students who do the high school ones get preferential treatment into the college program.

Chapter 8

Shane was pretty tempted to never get up off Sanchez's couch – despite the fact that his back was seriously cricked from the stupid angle he'd fallen asleep in; despite the fact that Sanchez had fallen asleep there as well and his feet were now way to close to Shane's face for comfort; despite the fact that his clothes, especially his jeans, felt disgusting – because if he moved, he would have to deal with whatever was coming his way now.

He wondered if child protection would notice if he just never left the couch?

Schofield feigned sleep whilst Sanchez woke up, looking at him sleepily from the other side of the couch. His hair was all mussed up and his shirt rode up, revealing a thin sliver of tanned skin just above the line of his pants, as he yawned and stretched. For a long moment, Sanchez stayed there, just looking at Shane as though trying to decide whether to wake him up or not. Eventually, he shrugged and slid carefully off the couch, padding to the kitchen to shove a stack of bread in the toaster.

Shane stayed there whilst the tempting smell of hot bread wafted in from the kitchen.

He stayed there as Sanchez ran upstairs and the tell-tale sound of water gushing through the pipes told Shane he was having a shower.

He very purposely stayed there on the couch and didn't go join him.

But that didn't mean his thoughts couldn't linger on the other boy's long, carved limbs and acres of smooth skin, all glistening wet. That thought sent curls of heat radiating through his body, starting in the pit of his stomach and spreading until even his night-cooled toes felt flushed.

He couldn't stay like that for long though. Not only could he not afford to dwell on these things, Sanchez had also come back downstairs, rubbing a towel through his disordered, dark hair and smoothly seized the pillow he'd been sleeping on, used it to whack Schofield around the head. It effectively jolted him back to harsh reality where fights and possibly getting expelled and social services had to take priority over the things he wanted and that included muscular boys who spoke Spanish and snark fluently, no matter how bad he wanted them.

"Time to get up," Sanchez said, dropping back onto the couch as Shane struggled to sit up, acting as though he'd just been woken. Sanchez had set a plate full of toast down on the coffee table in front of them and even though it was now mostly cold, they still munched their way through it in silence.

A full belly and a cold shower later, Shane swiped a pair of Sanchez's briefs and a faded pair of black jeans. The other boy was slightly taller than himself but they were obviously an old pair that he'd grown out of with the knees nearly worn through and even on Schofield, they were tight. Balling his own dirty pair up and stuffing them in his backpack, he finally felt ready to face the day.

And if Sanchez's eyes caught on the jut of his hip bones in the tight jeans, well, Shane pretended not to notice.  
He'd deal with things one problem at a time.

Sanchez however, wasn't so distracted that he couldn't snap, "We'll be late if you don't get a move on."

As he was shoving a handful of heavy looking textbooks into a backpack at the time, it really should have been unbearably nerdy and yet the other boy still managed to lace the statement with a healthy dose of derision that left Schofield feeling clumsy and decidedly less cool.

"We're going to be late anyway," he retorted, looking out the nearest window. It had taken him at least half an hour to walk to Sanchez's place the previous night so he couldn't imagine the pair of them making it to school in time for the first bell even if they ran every step of the way. Plus, sunlight was blazing in through the window. It was shaping up to be a beautiful hot day and he was wearing tight, black pants. Running was not an option he wanted to entertain.

When he looked back it was to find Sanchez wearing his trademark smirk and dangling a pair of car keys in the air.

"Dumbass," he heard Sanchez mutter just loud enough that he knew he was meant to hear it.

Shane couldn't be sure but if he had to guess, he'd say it sounded almost fond.

The car in question turned out to be a brown Toyota Camry that had left its heyday somewhere in the 80's.  
It also didn't have air-conditioning.

"Technically, it's my mom's," Sanchez explained, rolling down the windows, "but she catches the bus to work because she doesn't like driving home after the night shift – she's paranoid about falling asleep at the wheel – and she'll just come home and sleep through the day anyway, so she won't miss it."

Apart from that, their conversation was stilted the whole drive there and internally, Schofield was cursing himself for starting something when he probably wasn't even staying. He didn't think he would be the type to fuck and run but it didn't look like he'd get much choice in the matter now. Even with his limited – alright, non-existent – experience, he knew that long distance relationships usually ended badly.  
Somehow, even though fists couldn't be used across a telephone line, people still ended up hurt.

Instead of talking, Schofield let the windows capture each flash of the neighbourhood like a fleeting picture frame. There wasn't anything special about any of it, just another ordinary suburban neighbourhood with rusty swings and dead trees and over-grown lawns and that, that was what made it special. Shane tried but he couldn't entirely stop the thought that sprang to his mind, repeating 'I might never see this again.' It was stupid because it was never his neighbourhood to begin with and he was stupider for wanting it to be.

Even though the drive was only short – Sanchez cut through the back streets – by the time they pulled up at the school, Schofield's t-shirt was sticking to his back but he couldn't blame it entirely on the heat.

He would've happily swapped the awkward silence for a return to their angry banter even if it meant that it was only sex to Sanchez. It would've fucking hurt but it would also have solved at least one of his current problems and his solutions usually involved someone getting hurt anyway; someone usually being himself. Hell, at this rate, he'd have even swapped it for the sort of romantic bullshit that would've gotten both their heads stuffed down the nearest toilet.  
Instead, he had to deal with stony silence.

What met him at the School gates though, that was worse.

All his other problems – dealing with those bullying toe-rags, passing junior grade, working out what the fuck was going on between him and Sanchez – faded to nothing in the face of the problem standing right in front of him and his mind grinded to an instant, crashing halt.

The Rileys were waiting for him.

As he walked up the path towards them, Schofield was suddenly acutely aware of his battered appearance – a split lip, still swollen and rust coloured; the fading black eye, now green around the edges; the jeans, ratty and practically indecent even on his lithe frame and the string of purple hickeys that he hoped to high heaven would be missed amongst his myriad of other bruises.

"Your principal called us for a meeting," was all Buck Riley Senior needed to say. He was wearing his uniform and Schofield hated the thought that he had been called away from work on his account. "He said it was important."

Shane didn't bother to wave goodbye to Sanchez, didn't even turn back to look at him, it would be easier that way. Instead, he followed Buck Riley Senior down the hallway towards the principal's office and with every step, he felt the crushing weight of Paula Riley's disappointment and hurt falling onto his shoulders. He could see it written in every line on her face and in that moment, he hated himself for doing that to her.

Schofield had never seen the principal before, it had been the deputy who had greeted him, alongside his simpering assistant, when he had first moved in with the Rileys. Like everybody else in the fucking town of Beaufort, he must have been associated with the Marines at one point or another because his shiny brass nameplate proclaimed him as Captain Jack Walsh, retired.

Walsh was a tall man, physically imposing with a barrel chest and cool grey eyes like the frost on metal pipes. Shane half expected him to bark orders and threaten to whip him into shape but instead, he took a seat on a worn leather armchair and indicated that Shane and the Rileys should do likewise. On this playing field, Schofield could see the flecks of grey in his hair and the wrinkles around his eyes.

Schofield would be eternally grateful that he didn't start with "I suppose you know why you're here."

Not that he didn't.  
He knew absolutely categorically what had brought him to this office and dragged Paula and Buck away from their work too.  
He was just glad that Walsh wasn't going to make him say it in front of them.

"As you probably know seeing as you've been on the receiving end of quite a few, the punishment for skipping class is detention," Walsh said instead bluntly, "but the punishment for skipping detention is suspension. On top of truancy, you can add starting fights and damn near failing Spanish, so right now, Mr Schofield, suspension ought to be the least of your worries."

Walsh's mouth was set in a firm line and Shane felt uncomfortably like he was being court-marshalled. Sandwiched uncomfortably between the Rileys, he had never before wanted so much to be anywhere but right where he was.

"However," Walsh continued and it seemed to Schofield that his façade broke just a little, "I have been informed on good authority that on several such occasions, you were defending other students including those younger than yourself. Now, your methods may have been wrong but your attitude, however misguided, was honourable."

Beside him, he could feel Paula Riley shift, her warm bodyweight pressing into his.

Walsh reached for a piece of paper and a steaming cup of strong black coffee.  
"I also have here your latest results from Spanish class, courtesy of Mrs Cameron."

Walsh handed the paper to Buck Riley Senior and though Schofield only had a second to glance at it through his peripheral vision, not wanting to divert his attention from the principal for too long lest it all crash down around his ears whilst he wasn't watching, he was pleased to see he had at least scraped a B-.

When Shane looked back up again, Walsh was surveying him over his mug and Shane was visited by the same sensation that those cool grey eyes were x-raying him.

"Mrs Cameron," Walsh said, the barest hint of a smile twitching at the corner of his lips, "believes that far from being suspended, you need to be given direction, something to strive towards. It is her belief that you benefit from a challenge and will do everything in your power to rise to it."

In his mind's eye, Shane could see the feisty Spanish teacher issuing such a challenge and he, in his anger, determined to out-stubborn her ended up doing exactly as she had wanted him to in the first place.

_Well played, _he thought to himself, _well played. _

"Have you thought about what you want to do when you're finished here?" Walsh asked and the question took Schofield by surprise. "You'll soon be a senior. You need to think about your subject choices."

Shane had actually never given it any thought. He'd been to too many schools with too many different subjects to have ever stopped and tried to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. This place, this school, would just be the next in a long line-up. He took things one day at a time because there were no guarantees in his future.

Casting his eye around the room, Schofield caught a brief glimpse of the nameplate and he could hear the rustle of Buck Riley Senior's pressed uniform on the couch beside him. The answer slipped from him without thinking and though he had never considered it, it seemed to fit.  
"I want to be a Marine."

"A lot of people 'round here say that," Walsh said, leaning back into the creaking armchair and crossing his thick arms across his broad chest. "A lot of people say that but not a lot of them make it."

Shane thought of Buck and his quiet strength.  
He thought of his grandfather, who had been nothing short of a hero.  
He thought of Jack Walsh, who having done his service and earned a quiet retirement, had instead chosen to dedicate himself to the next generation.

He wanted to be like that.

"I want to be a pilot," Shane blurted out. The memory rose unbidden. In his mind's eye, he could suddenly see a five year old boy with dark hair and shockingly blue eyes playing with a model aeroplane in his own bedroom. Whatever came before or after it didn't matter, it was a happy memory and he lunged at it like a drowning man seeing the surface.

"Yes, the Marines'll sort you out," Walsh muttered, seemingly to himself before turning back to Schofield. "A pilot eh? The Marines can teach you how to fly but it's not an easy path. You'll need a decent SAT score and a college degree before they'll even consider you. You're already taking an AP subject but another one wouldn't hurt - "

"Physics," Schofield interrupted. He could still see the textbook sitting beside Sanchez's bed. Even if he sucked at it, at least he could always get help.

Walsh's eyes seemed to pierce straight through him.  
"Physics would be a good choice for a pilot and your math scores are above average, so no problem there. English could use some improvement and you will need to continue with Spanish - "

Shane thought about Sanchez talking in quiet, lilting Spanish to his mother in the low-light of their kitchen and that, more than anything else, made him determined to learn the language properly. Walsh however, seemed to take his momentary distraction as reluctance and he smiled indulgently.

" – yes, Spanish. Foreign languages are a mandatory graduation requirement. I'll personally put in a recommendation that you attend the ROTC instead of physical education here. That way you'll earn credit towards your diploma and start the physical training you're gonna need if you want to join the Marines. If you do well in the program, there's the possibility that you'll be offered a college scholarship as well." Walsh sighed, "It's not an easy path, Shane. They'll push you to limits you didn't know you had and then beyond but if you're up for a challenge…"

Walsh shrugged and let the sentence hang and dammit, they all knew that if there was one way to make sure Shane Schofield would do his fucking best, it was issuing it as a challenge.

Schofield picked absentmindedly at a couple of loose threads as Walsh gathered up a stack of papers and handed them to him. He didn't spare them a glance.

"You can go now, Mr Schofield," Walsh said evenly, never breaking his calm gaze, "I need a few words alone with your foster parents."

Shane barrelled out of the room as fast as he could, the weight of the Riley's bodies pressing in on him was almost more than he could bear. As much as he wanted to stay and hear what Walsh had to say to them, he needed to get out more.

He flicked through the papers absentmindedly, pamphlets on physical training and SAT prep classes and physics books for sale and even a recruitment flyer, until he found himself walking through the front doors of the school. At first, everything looked exactly as it had when he'd arrived that morning but very quickly, his sharp eyes picked out a detail that hadn't been there before – a plain white sedan, parked in the visitor parking.

It was a completely unremarkable car but one that Schofield would know anywhere.  
It was his social worker's car.

Until that moment, he hadn't known for sure that it was over.

Schofield couldn't tell if it was white hot fear or fury that made him scrunch up the papers for classes he would never take and a recruitment officer he would never see. He had almost let himself believe he would get that future.  
He'd been so fucking stupid.

And without a backward glance, he jumped the fence and ran as far from that school and his social worker and the Rileys as he could.


End file.
